One year in: Pipi Sopp on flexibility, family and finding her own rhythm

There is a certain kind of energy that comes with the end of financial year.

For Pipi Sopp, this June has felt like a proper introduction to the rhythm of commercial lending. The kind where people seem to appear from everywhere, needing answers quickly, trying to get decisions made before the year closes, and relying on you to help make sense of what is possible in a short window of time.

"It’s my first EOFY where I assisting my clients with both Residential & Commercial Lending,” she says. “It feels like everyone needs something done at once.”

She says it with a laugh. That is part of what makes speaking with Pipi feel so easy. There is a lightness to the way she talks about hard things. The work can be heavy, the hours can stretch, the phone can ring at the worst possible time, but there is still a sense that she genuinely likes the challenge.

A year into MedX Finance, with two young kids at home and $100 million written, Pipi’s first year has been full by any measure. But the story is not really about volume. It is about what the past year has allowed her to build, and what it has taught her about work, family, clients and backing herself.

Before joining MedX Finance, Pipi had spent more than a decade in specialist lending. She knew the work, she knew the clients and she knew how to lend. What had become harder to ignore was that the structure around the work no longer fit the life she was building.

With young kids, she needed more flexibility. Not less responsibility. Not less ambition. Just more control over how and when the work happened.

“I knew a traditional nine-to-five corporate job wasn’t going to suit my family life,” she says. “I needed flexibility. But it wasn’t because I wanted to work part-time or anything like that. Absolutely not. I just needed to do it in my own time.”

That distinction matters because, for Pipi, flexibility has never meant stepping back. If anything, becoming a broker has meant stepping further in. There is more ownership, more uncertainty and more pressure when the outcome sits with you. But there is also something energising about knowing that what you put in is directly connected to what you build.

“I’ll put that pressure on myself,” she says. “I didn’t want to be managed or have someone telling me I had to be somewhere at a certain time. I knew that if I had the flexibility, I was going to achieve so much more”

That has been true in practice, although the days themselves do not always look neat.

Some mornings start before the kids wake up, with an hour online to clear tasks before the house comes alive. Other mornings are deliberately slow, because breakfast together has become one of the calmer parts of the day. Then there are daycare drop-offs, naps, calls, client work, lender conversations, paperwork and those concentrated blocks where everything has to get done because the window is small.

One morning, after logging on early and clearing a few priorities, Pipi took her children, Molly and Bobby, down to the beach. They spent a couple of hours playing in the sand before heading home, where Pipi got back online while the kids napped.

There is something in that example that captures her year well. It is not the glossy version of flexibility where everything feels balanced all the time. It is much more real than that. It is making the most of the pockets of time you have, being present when you can, and then working with focus when the opportunity appears.

“I feel like this year I’ve been able to have my cake and eat it too,” she says. “It hasn’t been easy, and I’m very lucky with the support I have, but it has shown me that you can do both.”

That sense of doing both has also changed how she relates to clients.

Medical professionals are busy people. Their financial decisions rarely happen in perfect conditions or tidy windows. They happen between patients, after theatre, around family, in the middle of practice growth, during big career transitions or at the end of a long day when everyone is tired but the decision still matters.

Pipi understands that because her own life is not perfectly contained either.

Most of her clients know she is self-employed now. They know they are dealing with her directly, not a faceless system. If they call at 6pm, she will answer if she can. If she misses it, she will call back. Sometimes there are kids in the background. Sometimes the timing is messy. But she has found that clients understand that because their lives are often just as full.

“I feel like I can relate to my clients so much more now,” she says. “The juggle is real.”

That is one of the more interesting parts of Pipi’s first year. Moving into broking has not made her less professional; it has made her feel more herself. In a more traditional environment, she felt she had to be a certain version of herself. Now, she feels able to show up in a way that is still professional, still committed and still deeply client-focused, but more human.

And in many ways, that is what clients are responding to.

Finance is personal, even when it is commercial. A home loan, practice loan, equipment decision or refinance is never just a transaction. It usually sits inside something bigger: a career move, a family decision, a business plan, a risk, an opportunity or a moment of uncertainty. When clients are making those decisions, they want someone who knows the lending environment, but they also want someone who understands that there is a life wrapped around the numbers.

That is where Pipi feels the work most strongly.

One thing Pipi has remained consistent in throughout her career is the importance of building strong, trusting relationships and that takes time. It often starts with borrowing capacity checks, early conversations, lender calls, policy questions and client education, with many scenarios not progressing straight away, and sometimes not at all in the short term.

That can be a strange adjustment when you move into a model where you are only paid when something settles. You can spend hours helping someone, thinking through options or running scenarios, and there may be no immediate commercial outcome.

At first, that can feel hard. Over time, Pipi has come to see it differently.

“You have to shift your mindset,” she says. “Those little behaviours, the educating, the care, the extra work, they come back. You get referrals. You build trust.”

That is a very simple idea, but it says a lot about the kind of broker she is becoming.

The work before the work matters. The early conversation matters. The time spent helping someone understand what is realistic matters. So does the willingness to pick up the phone, ask another question, speak to a lender, check a policy setting or explain why the answer is not as simple as it might look from the outside.

For clients, that can be the difference between feeling like they are being sold to and feeling like someone is genuinely helping them think.

It also points to something broader about the value of a specialist broker. Clients often see the outcome, but they do not always see the network behind it.

Over the past year, Pipi has come to appreciate how much broking relies on relationships across the industry. Not just with clients, but with lenders, BDMs, credit teams, operations teams, internal support and other brokers who can help think through a scenario when something is not straightforward.

“If someone asked me what helps you do well in this industry, I’d say be friends with everyone,” she says. “You never know when you’re going to need that support.”

She does not mean that in a shallow networking sense. She means that relationships are part of the infrastructure of the work. When a client needs an answer, or when a deal needs to be understood properly, the broker’s ability to know who to call and how to ask the right question matters.

Most clients will never have the time, access or context to build those relationships themselves. They are busy treating patients, running practices, growing businesses and looking after their own families. Part of Pipi’s role is to be the person who can connect those dots on their behalf.

Pipi explains "So much of the job happens through conversation. Calls with clients. Calls with lenders. Calls with the MedX Finance team. Calls to clarify, chase, explain, check, reframe and keep things moving".

It is a small detail, but it captures the unseen nature of the work.

The visible part is the approval, the structure or the outcome. The less visible part is the thinking, the follow-up and the relationship work that sits behind it.

Pipi has also had to learn how to rely on people in a new way.

After more than a decade in lending, she came into broking knowing how to assess a deal and understand a client’s position. What she did not know was every system, every process and every internal pathway that came with a new environment. For someone who openly admits she likes control, that was not always easy.

“When I first started, I knew how to lend,” she says. “But I didn’t know the systems. I had to rely on everyone.”

That reliance was confronting at times, but it was also necessary. She had to trust the people around her, lean on the MedX Finance team and learn the new rhythm as the work came in. Over time, that balance has changed. She now knows when to hold something herself and when to let the support around her do what it is there to do.

That has been part of the personal growth of the year too. Backing yourself does not mean carrying everything alone. Sometimes it means choosing the right environment, trusting the people in it and learning how to build with them.

When asked what she would tell someone thinking about making a similar move, Pipi does not overcomplicate it.

“I wish I had done it sooner,” she says.

There is no bitterness in that. More a recognition that, for her own growth, the change was needed. The timing of big decisions is rarely perfect. There were children, pregnancy, family considerations and the security that comes with staying where you are. But when the environment finally felt right, the decision felt clear.

“When I first spoke to Todd and Michael, I got off the phone and said to my husband ‘This is what I’m going to do.’ There was no question in my mind.”

A year later, that instinct has been proven right.

The next year will bring new goals. Pipi is already thinking about putting a bigger number on the board, because that is how she is wired. But she is also thinking about how to use her time more wisely, how to protect the moments with her children, and how to get better at separating the parts of her life that can sometimes blur too easily.

There were days this year where she’d find herself still in her training gear, waiting on a call or an update, only to miss the window to go for a run. Looking back, she wishes she’d taken those moments for herself.

“I should have been more disciplined in taking care of myself,” she says.

That honesty is part of what makes her reflection feel real. It has been a successful year, but not a perfect one. There are things she would do differently, habits she wants to improve and moments she wants to protect more deliberately.

Still, the bigger feeling is one of momentum.

Pipi has found a way of working that fits who she is, the family she is raising and the clients she wants to serve. It is not always clean or calm. It is not always balanced in the way people like to talk about balance. But it is hers.

And one year in, that seems to be the point.

She is building a career around the life, not the other way around. She is proving that flexibility does not have to mean less ambition. She is showing that client care often happens in the quiet, unseen work before anything settles. And she is doing it in a way that feels unmistakably like her.

Optimistic. Hard-working. Honest. Human.

Exactly the kind of person clients hope is on the other end of the phone when the next decision matters.