The Broker for Homebuyers and Property Investors | 🏆 5 x Top 100 Mortgage Broker in Australia

I’m Redom Syed, FBAA Broker of the Year 2025 and Founder of Flint Group, one of Australia’s fastest-growing mortgage businesses.

What started as a mission to help families like mine make better money decisions has grown into a $10 B vision — to build one of Australia’s largest, most impactful mortgage groups.

💡 Who we are:
Flint is a modern brokerage, built for modern brokers who want to command attention.  We are a group of 100+ professionals across Australia and overseas united by one purpose: to empower Australians to understand, plan, and act with confidence.

🏆 Why clients and professionals choose us:
	•	Award-Winning Expertise – Recognised as Australia’s FBAA Broker of the Year (2025) and in MPA’s Top 100 Brokers for 7 years running.
	•	Ex-Treasury Economist Insight – We combine data, economics, and lending strategy to create smarter client outcomes.
	•	End-to-End Property & Finance Support – From first homes to complex investment portfolios, our clients access 50+ lenders and hundreds of tailored solutions.
	•	Proactive Loan Management – Our dedicated review team ensures every client stays on the lowest rate available — without needing to ask.
	•	Research-Driven Guidance – Our in-house research team has predicted every major rate and policy shift for nearly a decade, helping clients save tens of thousands.

📅 Book a chat → calendly.com/redom/15min￼
🌏 Learn more → www.flintinvest.au￼
📞 Contact → 0489 943 079 | info@flintgroup.au

Redom Syed - Mortgage Broker

Vinh Giang changed my life.

Not a throwaway line. I mean it literally.

A few years ago, nothing was moving. I had the ideas, I had the work ethic, but I kept hitting the same invisible wall.

Turns out the wall had a name.

I had never actually learned how to communicate.

Years of economics, strategy, analysis - and nobody once told me that none of it lands if you can't make another person feel it.

That realisation stung.

Since then, every Sunday I audit my own communication from the week. Not my numbers. My words. Where I lost people. Where something actually landed.

Last week I got to see Vinh and say thank you in person.

If you're technically strong and still feel like you're not getting the traction you deserve - it's probably not your knowledge that's the problem.

It's the gap between your head and the room.

Redom Syed

Co-Founder Flint Group | Building the Future of Mortgages | 2025 FBAA Broker of The Year

Most rules exist to keep people comfortable.

They tell you to slow down, wait your turn, blend in, play it safe.

I’ve learnt that the rules worth breaking are usually the ones that make you hesitate.

Some of the best moves I’ve made felt too early or too fast or slightly irresponsible at the time. 

(Like telling my wife i'd marry her a week into dating)

But they were also the ones that changed everything.

Progress doesn’t come from following the path perfectly.

It comes from pushing at the edges and seeing what gives.

Trying things that might not work and saying yes before you feel ready.

Backing yourself when there’s no guarantee.

Most people are waiting for permission.

I stopped.

Break the rules that keep you small.

Keep the ones that keep you honest.

The rest really don’t matter.

When I was a kid, my biggest dream wasn't to be a CEO.

It was to own a factory.

Every Sunday my dad would take me to work with him. 

He was a factory supervisor, and I loved every single one of those mornings.

People showing up, doing their work, looking after their families. 

It felt safe. It felt stable.

Then my parents lost their jobs.

Overnight, that feeling vanished. 

I watched what that does to a family up close. 

The stress. The silence at the dinner table. The way everything shifts without anyone saying why.

I will never forget it.

That loss planted a quiet dream, that one day I'd build that place for other people.

Last year, it became real.

We opened Flint Nepal. 50+ people. A real community, built from scratch.

I think about my dad every time I walk through those doors.

Every blind corner, every moment of doubt, every stumble along the way.

It all makes sense now.

Sometimes you walk into a conversation expecting nothing.

Then someone says one thing…and it hits you right in the chest.

Over dinner recently, someone looked at me and said:

“Look, you’re a smart boy. I reckon you’ll be worth about $200 mil one day.”

Then they turned to my partner and said:

“You’re a machine. You’ll be a billionaire.”

Oof.

Compliment…and a backhander all in one 😂

And weirdly? I loved it.

Being underestimated is such a gift.

It gives you edge, and keeps you hungry, and reminds you there’s more in the tank.

I’ve got nothing to prove to anyone.

But moments like that light a fire anyway.

They make you think bigger, dream bigger, act bigger, and do more.

Never underestimate the power of being underestimated.

People see the meetings.

But they don’t see the in-between.

Back-to-back days, long nights, and calls that run way over time.

But still, two hours blocked every night though. Non-negotiable.

Playing princesses with the kids, then stories, and finally one last cuddle for the night.

Then it’s right back on.

Weekly dinner calls with our GM Rushmi Shrestha  in Nepal.

Deep check-ins with my best mate Adi Chanda.

Sometimes it's business, but mostly, it’s making sure we’re okay.

High performance isn’t just output.

It’s staying human while you push.

That part matters so much more than most people think.

I had a conversation recently that completely messed with the way I think about goals.

Partially because of who it was, but more because of what they said.

We were talking about growth, and I threw out a number that felt ambitious, hoping no-one would laugh.

“10 billion.”

They didn’t laugh.

In fact, they paused…then said,

“Why stop there?”

And just like that, the number doubled, then doubled again.

It wasn’t bravado, or hype.

It was calm. Almost casual.

Like the idea of thinking that big was obvious.

That’s when it hit me.

Most of the limits we set aren’t real constraints.

They’re comfort limits.

They’re numbers that feel “reasonable” so we don’t have to sit with the discomfort of dreaming properly.

It felt like building my first Lego set again.

No instructions. No final picture. Just a pile of pieces and the freedom to see what happens.

If you aim higher than feels sensible, you might miss the exact target, but you’ll land somewhere far more interesting than where you started.

Since that conversation, I’ve stopped asking,

“What’s realistic?”

And started asking,

“What’s possible…if I stop playing small?”

That question changes everything.

Somewhere along the way, being tired became a personality trait.

"Busy" became the default answer to "how are you?" Exhaustion became proof that you care.

I've never bought it.

The genuinely high-performing people I've been around aren't running on empty by Wednesday. 

They're sharp. Decisive. Fewer decisions, but better ones.

Burning yourself out isn't dedication. It's poor engineering.

If a business only moves because everyone inside it is redlining, that's not high performance. 

That's a structural problem wearing a hustle costume.

The best thing I did as a leader was stop celebrating stress.

Real performance looks like precision. 

Sharp calls made early, and systems that run without someone heroically holding them together.

You don't prove anything by how much you can suffer for your business.

You prove it by building one that doesn't ask you to.

I don’t think trust comes from being the boss who’s always “on”.

And it definitely doesn’t come from pretending everything’s fine when it’s not.

For me, trust is built in the day-to-day stuff.

I try to meet people as people first.

But here’s the part that matters just as much.

We’re clear on expectations.

The bar is known and the work still has to be good.

Being relaxed doesn’t mean being vague.

But being kind doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations.

I’ll back my team hard and I expect them to back the standard we’re building towards.

When people know where they stand, trust grows.

When effort is noticed and results matter, respect follows.

That balance, real connection plus real accountability, is what keeps teams strong.

Chill where it can be and serious where it needs to be.

That’s how good work gets done.

If you want a crash course in reading a room, try reasoning with a three-year-old at bedtime.

No logic works. No clever framing. They've already decided. And they will outlast you every single time.

I used to walk into client meetings the same way. 

Armed with data, ready to out-logic anyone in the room.

It never worked as well as I thought it should.

People making the biggest financial decision of their lives aren't looking for the smartest person in the room. 

They're overwhelmed. Second-guessing themselves. Carrying a weight you can't see just by looking at them.

The moment I stopped trying to impress and started trying to understand, everything shifted.

Nobody calls a broker because they want a presentation.

They call because they're stressed and they need someone to make the complicated feel manageable.

That's the whole job.

Turns out my little one was teaching me that all along.

I thought I was just building a company.

Turns out, the company was building me.

When I quit my job as an economist, I genuinely believed the hardest part would be finding clients. 

I had the degree. I had the technical skills. I figured the rest would just sort itself out with enough spreadsheets and strategy.

It did not sort itself out.

Entrepreneurship isn't just a job. 

It's a mirror, and it shows you things about yourself you'd honestly rather not see.

For me, it exposed two things pretty quickly.

That I couldn't communicate anywhere near as well as I thought I could. 

And that underneath all the qualifications and the confidence, there was a very loud voice telling me I had no idea what I was doing.

Both of those hit hard.

I had all the knowledge. 

But knowledge without the ability to make someone else feel it is just noise. 

And self-doubt without anywhere to hide it is just...heavy.

Looking back now, those early years didn't just build a business.

They built a version of me that's more honest, less precious about being right, and genuinely okay with not having all the answers.

A version that knows when to close the laptop and go have the most fun with my favourite tiny humans in our living room.

Chasing numbers is easy.

The real thing - the thing that actually stays with you - is looking back years later and respecting the person the whole journey made you into.

That part you can't plan for.

It just happens, if you let it.

I used to think a silent office meant everyone was being productive.

Then we had a day last month where our space was absolutely packed. 

Zero moments of quiet. 

Energy that was almost impossible to describe.

Content being filmed in one corner, a deal being worked through in another, conversations bleeding into each other across the room.

Loud. Chaotic. The best the office has ever felt.

Silence in a workplace is often just people not talking to each other, and teams that don't talk to each other don't function as a team.

The standards here are high. The work has to be good.

But I've stopped believing excellence needs a sterile environment to grow in.

The people who thrive here find their footing in a fast-moving room within thirty seconds and get straight to work.

Either the energy fuels you or it doesn't.

I'd rather have a loud room full of people who are genuinely in it, than a quiet one where everyone's just waiting for the day to end.

When I think about legacy, I don’t think about numbers, titles, or how big something looks from the outside.

I think about people.

The people I work with, who trust me, and who choose to build alongside me.

What I’m building is meant to create opportunity.

To give people confidence and leave them better than when they came in.

That matters.

But the clearest version of legacy for me is my kids.

I don’t want what I’m building to just provide for them.

I want it to become the runway they take flight from.

Something they can look at and say, “If that’s possible, what else is?”

I hope they see the work, the care, the risks, the mistakes, the recovery…and then go further than I ever could.

Further than I can even imagine.

If one day they take what I’ve built and outgrow it, that’s success.

And if the people around me feel supported, challenged, and proud of what we’ve created together, that’s success too.

Legacy, to me, isn’t about being remembered.

It’s about building something that lets others rise long after you step back.

That’s always been the goal.

When I feel stuck, I don't write a five year plan.

I give myself six weeks.

Looking too far ahead when you're already overwhelmed just makes everything heavier. So I shrink the timeline.

Six weeks of showing up. Every day. No waiting for motivation, no waiting until it feels right.

Something shifts around week three.

Not because the problems are solved. But because momentum is its own kind of medicine. 

You stop feeling stuck because you're moving.

I've done this reset more than once.

You don't need a perfect plan. You don't need to feel ready.

You just need six weeks and a decision that you're not allowed to quit on yourself.

The rest takes care of itself.

A lot of the drive people see in me didn’t just come from ambition.

It came from pain.

From growing up around things I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and watching people I loved struggle in ways that left marks you don’t see on the surface.

That stuff stays with you, even when you think you’ve moved on.

For a long time, I didn’t know what to do with it.

You carry it, you bury it, and you tell yourself it’s just part of the past.

But pain doesn’t disappear.

It either hardens you…or it fuels you.

At some point, I realised I didn’t want anyone else going through the same things I did.

Feeling that stuck and powerless and unsure.

That’s where the passion came from.

It’s why I care so deeply about helping people make better decisions.

Why I don’t treat this work like numbers on a screen.

This isn’t just business to me…it’s personal.

Pain has a way of shaping you, whether you like it or not and I chose to let it sharpen me instead of shrink me.

You don’t get to choose what happens to you early in life.

But you do get to choose what you turn it into.

And I decided to turn mine into something useful.

Something that keeps me moving forward.

Rental growth doesn’t show up all at once.

It leaves clues first.

Low vacancy rates are the obvious one…but they’re not enough on their own.

The stronger signals usually sit underneath.

When listings stay tight and rents keep resetting higher at lease renewal, that matters.

When incentives disappear, that matters.

When tenants stop negotiating and just accept increases, that matters too.

Another big one people miss: household formation outpacing supply.

More people per dwelling dropping.

More demand for rentals at the same time construction slows.

That’s when pressure builds quietly.

Rental growth isn’t about one hot quarter, it’s about imbalance persisting longer than expected.

When those signals line up, rent doesn’t spike, it grinds higher.

Slowly. Relentlessly.

And once that’s embedded, it’s very hard to reverse quickly.

That’s usually when investors look back and say,

“Ah well…that was obvious.”

In real time, it rarely feels that way.

If I look back, there are plenty of things I could’ve done better.

Moved faster in some areas, trusted myself earlier and backed my judgement instead of waiting for more certainty.

But the real lesson isn’t about what I’d change back then.

It’s about what I can change now.

Reflection is useful. Dwelling isn’t. (That's a property pun for you. 😂)

Every stage of your career gives you a chance to do things slightly better than the last one.

Communicate clearer and decide quicker and hold higher standards.

Letting go of what isn’t working.

And yes, in a few years I’ll probably look back at this version of myself and think,

“Hmm…could’ve done that differently too.”

That’s fine. That’s just growth.

The win isn’t getting ‘everything’ right.

It’s staying honest enough to reflect, and brave enough to adjust.

If you’re still learning, you’re still moving forward.

That’s the point.

Leadership, to me, starts with seeing people properly.

Seeing what they’re capable of…sometimes before they see it themselves.

My job isn’t to keep people small or comfortable.

It’s to ask what they actually want, then help them move toward it.

And that looks different for everyone.

Some people want to grow inside what we’re building. I’ll back them hard.

Some people want something bigger or different down the line and that’s okay too.

People don’t owe me loyalty forever. They don’t have to stick around.

If someone’s goals go beyond what I can offer, I don’t hold them back.

I’ll take them right to the edge, help them get ready, and watch them take off.

Leadership isn’t about possession. It’s about contribution.

If people leave more confident, more capable, and clearer about who they are than when they arrived, then I’ve done my job.

Everything else is just a bonus.

The boom phase of 2025 is about to slow down.

That period where prices ran purely on cheap money, emotion, and momentum, that’s behind us.

Rates are higher, credit is tighter and buyers are more considered.

It’s a normalisation story.

Property hasn’t stopped working.

From here, growth comes from fundamentals again:

✅Income growth. 
✅Supply constraints. 
✅Population growth. 
✅Asset selection.

The days of “buy anything and win” are gone.

The days of strategy are back.

That’s not bad news.

It’s just a different game.

Booms reward speed.

This phase rewards thinking.

I’m not trying to build a culture that lives on a slide deck.

I’m building one that lives in the small moments.

Making jokes before meeting and taking the absolute piss out of each other on camera.

High standards, yes.

But also smiles, jokes, and a lot of noise.

Because when people feel comfortable being real, they show up better.

They work harder and they stay longer.

Culture isn’t the big speeches.

It’s the everyday stuff you don’t plan for, and wouldn’t trade.

The worst mistakes don’t announce themselves loudly.

They creep in quietly. 

Something you missed, a decision you took too long on, a moment where you should’ve acted… and didn’t…and then you realise.

That sinking feeling hits your chest and suddenly everything feels louder.

Your own voice is brutal. You replay it again and again, wondering how you didn’t see it sooner.

You start imagining the looks and what people must be thinking.

In those moments, it can feel like the end of the world.

I’ve been there and what I’ve learned, slowly, is this:

Everyone is doing this for the first time. No one gets a perfect run. No one avoids mistakes completely.

They just get better at surviving them.

Sometimes things don’t work out, even when you give it everything. (That part really hurts.)

But if you can walk away knowing you tried, really tried, that’s all that matters.

It doesn’t erase the mistake, but it keeps you moving.

You don’t need to be flawless.

You just need the courage to show up again.

Mistakes aren’t the end.

They’re proof you were in the game.

And tomorrow, you try again.

Are you worried about buying the wrong property?

Not sure which market is best? Or if you're overpaying?

Worse yet…ever feel like every so-called "expert" is just trying to flog you some nonsense?

If you’ve been nodding along, then I'm glad we're on the same page.

Hey, I’m Adi.

I run Alaya Property, a buyer’s agency that helps investors make data-backed property purchases - without getting railroaded.

You see, I learned long ago that the property market is stacked against everyday investors in Australia.

→ Sales agents work for the seller, not you.

→ Shiny new builds often come with hidden kickbacks.

→ Many investors buy based on hype, not fundamentals, and then it becomes "property doesn't work".

That doesn't make any sense, considering most of the wealthy have gotten that way through property. Don’t you wonder how they did it?

The usual result? Overpriced, underperforming properties that set you back instead of setting you up.

That’s where Alaya Property comes in.

What we do:

We help investors buy smart - so they won’t be relying on the pension later.

→ We deep-dive into market trends, numbers, and long-term fundamentals, because really this is what drives prices.

→ We find underpriced properties with serious potential (not just what’s easy to sell).

→ We negotiate for you so you walk away with equity from day one

And we don’t do it alone.

We’ve got an economist on the team tracking macro trends, spotting suburb shifts before the rest of the industry catches on.

My team is also growing so we have more people on the ground.

This is the exact approach I used to build a $5M portfolio for myself - one that lets my partner & me live a life where we no longer have to worry about money.

We can help you get there too.

Want to find out if we can help you specifically? Here you go.

https://tidycal.com/3e8n2l3/30mins-discovery-call

Adi Chanda

I caught up with my Melbourne team recently.

At one point we were all just sitting around together having lunch.

Nothing particularly exciting was happening. 

My gals and guys were chatting, laughing, maybe decompressing a little after a hectic period.

And I remember taking a brief (very brief because my brain sucks) pause and thinking “damn, this is insane”.

I looked around the room at this group of people and I couldn’t help but be a little proud of what we’ve done in such a short period of time.

This incredible thing we’re building. These beautiful, thoughtful, driven humans I have the privilege to stand by while we change the lives of 100’s of Australians.

For a minute - maybe longer - I probably look stoned and out of it, but I was just sitting there taking it all in.

Because there was a time not that long ago where this was literally just me.

And now there's a shared mission with a bunch of people I would punch a small, defenceless child for.

I don’t know… the only way I can really describe it is that it feels like I’m living inside a dream I didn’t even realise I was allowed to have.

Does that make sense?

No?

Well, don’t worry about it then.

I'll help you build the kind of property portfolio that keeps the pension out of your retirement plans.

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I still get embarrassed talking about Alaya Property.

Especially with friends from before it existed.

A mate asked me the other day how many people are in the team now.

It was such a simple question.

I have 23 people across the business today.

But in that split second before I answered, I felt this weird urge to shrink the number.

I wanted to say, “Oh, well a couple are part-time,” or “some are offshore,” or add details he never asked for, just to make it sound smaller.

That moment, along with many others, has been living rent free in my head for a while.

Why did I feel the need to justify it?

Why did I feel slightly embarrassed saying the actual number out loud?

It feels easy to talk about Alaya with business friends who live in this world every day.

It feels different with friends from before all of this.

Almost like I am worried about sounding too big for my boots.

Which is ridiculous, because I am still the same not-quite-right-in-the-head person who was there before any of this existed.

I’m coming up on 2 years of running Alaya and some days it still feels like day 1.

I look forward to the day I stop apologizing for living out my purpose.

In the past week, I’ve seen 3 posts where someone has taken a screenshot of another person’s mistake and shared it publicly for everyone to weigh in on.

Names are blurred, context is trimmed, and the whole thing is dressed up as some kind of moral lesson.

What irks me silly is that a couple of those came from people who regularly talk about kindness, leadership, and lifting others up.

Contradiction, no?

It’s easy to talk about being kind when there is nothing to gain from being cruel.

It’s harder when you are handed a piece of low-hanging fruit that will probably get you likes, comments, and attention if you post it.

We have all made stupid mistakes.

We have all sent messages we wish we could edit.

I know I’m one screenshot away from becoming a meme on the internet.

So the real question isn’t whether the mistakes deserved critique.

The question is why humiliating someone publicly has become acceptable content.

Isn’t the whole point of kindness that it should show up no matter the scenario?

Otherwise it’s just false advertising.

Can someone explain to me why being an asshole is so socially acceptable here?

Apparently not everyone’s happy about your progress.

And I’m still trying to come to terms with the whole thing 🥺

Abundance - I’m learning - is also about how I respond to situations where I feel burned.

Life is such a weird thing to navigate.

Why’s there no user manual for this shit? Lol

I’ve had to unlearn some silly shit over the last 2 years.

The biggest one is that resumes mean something.

Running a business has a funny way of stripping away the safety nets I had in corporate life, and hiring good humans who are exceptional is where I’ve been tested the most.

Suddenly there’s nowhere to hide behind the process or brand or “well, they looked good on paper.”

Truth be told, I’m still not great at this because I can’t seem to trust my instincts.

Every single time, the pattern’s been identical.

Something just felt a little off.

And instead of trusting that, I talked myself out of it because the resume was looking goooddd and the answers were on point.

I think it’s one of those “rite of passage” things all business owners eventually need to go through.

If you’ve spent years dealing with people bullshitting you, you’ve probably developed a pretty sharp internal filter without realising it. 

Corporate systems teach us to ignore that and chase credentials instead, and that’s how you end up rewarding asshole behaviour over character.

I’m learning the hard way that it’s far easier to train decent humans to be exceptional than it is to untrain highly skilled people to not be shitty.

So if you’re doubting yourself, here’s the lesson I keep relearning the hard way - trust that inner voice, my friend.

Even though you can’t describe it fully, it’s there to keep you “safe”.

This business stuff is so hard man lol

You know most of the time when I tell myself I’m unhappy, it’s not happiness I’m missing. 

It’s the icky feeling I get when I can’t control something.

Just dumb stuff.

Not to get all biblical on LinkedIn but..

Redom & I say “this too shall pass” now a lot these days lol

Pretty sure we say that to each other at least twice a week now, usually after a call neither of us wanted to have or a problem neither of us saw coming.

I genuinely miss when our biggest stress was 
Miguel having too many calls in his calendar, or us obsessing over a process tweak.

Half my days I was sitting there rocking back & forth like “wow, my problems could never be worse than this”.

Oh you sweet, naive little bastard.

Those problems, these days, don’t even get the old heart rate up anymore.

Because while our impact is bigger now, so are the problems that have come along for the ride.

There are more moving parts than I can count, more people relying on our decisions, and more moments where we feel the weight of errthang.

It requires a completely different nervous system to operate at this new level.

When it gets especially uncomfy, one of us will usually say, “this too shall pass,” and it is half joke, half reminder that nothing good or bad lasts forever.

I would be lying if I said I’m enjoying this chapter.

But I’m kinda sorta grateful for it because it’s making me into someone I need to be for us to get where I want.

I definitely do not want to romanticise it though.

Building something meaningful is such a privilege, but oh boy is it heavy in ways most people will never see.

Build a business they said 😒

I’ve put on 6kgs since I got to my folks' place 17mims ago.

Always a fun time  being fed like you’re 4 with the metabolism of an 80 year old.

Anyways, house & land packages - no es bueno.

My parents always ask the same question when we chat.

“How’s work, beta?”

It doesn’t matter if I’m at home, out for dinner, or sitting at a table with 20+ people from my team.

Somewhere in the conversation, it always comes up.

When I stepped away from my corporate career and decided to build something of my own, I don’t think either of them really understood it.

I’d studied for years, landed a well-paying job, and followed the path that was meant to equal stability.

So from their point of view, it probably looked like I’d deliberately chosen uncertainty - in my mid-30s, no less.

What I hear underneath that question now is something very different. It’s:

→ “Are you okay?”

→ “Are you sure this was the right call for you?”

They’ve watched me uproot my life to chase something unproven - something I’d never done before.

That’s a scary thing to watch as a parent, even if you believe in your kid.

Maybe especially if you believe in your kid.

Every time I say it’s busy, or challenging, or going well, I see a relief settle in.

I think about what that must feel like for them sometimes.

You spend decades trying to set your child up for a stable life, and just when it seems like they’ve got it sorted, they choose to flip the table on purpose.

That kind of faith requires a lot of trust.

So when they ask me how work is going, the answer’s usually similar.

I tell them I’m surrounded by people I care about.

That the work challenges me and inspires me.

That I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.

And that even though nothing is guaranteed, the odds feel better now because I’m building something that actually feels mine.

And every bit of my heart & soul is dedicated to the pursuit of making large scale impact.

I think that’s what they’re really asking.

Not how work is going, but whether I’m okay.

Parenting is really fkn hard, y’all.

We have us a brand spankn’ new team member.

Joe Guta starts as our Settlement Coordinator 😌

I spoke to Joe a couple of months ago on the back of a recommendation from my guy, Terry.

Truth be told, I’m in the fortunate position to get lots of folks reaching out for positions at Alaya.

But alas, I don’t have enough seconds in the day to meet everyone.

When big T says things to me though, I just do the thing.

When I met Joe, there was this beautiful humility and presence about him.

I’ve always felt a pull towards people who were grounded, kind and radiated "abundance" energy.

After speaking to Joe, I remember calling Miguel and saying we need to find this brother a gig in the company one day.

A couple of months later a position became available so it was a no brainer to bring him in.

While Joe’s an avid investor and an entrepreneur - for the first time it wasn’t his resume that attracted me.

It was the way he thinks, the way he speaks about others, and the way he carries himself.

Joe (even though you're not here on LinkedIn), to say I’m excited that we both took a leap of faith with each other is a silly understatement sir.

Let’s change this industry sir, weatherboard by weatherboard 🤝🏽

I truly truly believe not all of us are cut out for buying - and more importantly - holding property.

I just spent $4,300 fixing the shower at one of my units. This is not a fun job.

I know you’re not going to read this sexy review.

So let me summarize it por favor.

We recently worked with a badass very experience property investor couple who had already been burned by other buyers agents before finding us.

Yay.

They came to us with a brief that was ambitious and stressful and resulted in a teeny tiny bit of anxiety.

They wanted 3 properties, across different locations, all running concurrently, and all inside a 10-week window.

If you have ever been involved in a single property purchase, you already know how many moving parts there are.

Trying to line up 3 of them at once, under time pressure, adds a completely different level of complexity.

Behind the scenes, it was challenging in exactly the ways you would expect - some days felt like a shitshow on steroids.

In hindsight, I learned that it didn’t matter that not everything went smoothly, because it definitely did not.

What mattered was that we knew what we were doing and genuinely cared about the people trusting us with a $2m decision.

Everyone on our team is an investor themselves, which helps more than you realise.

So we just overcommunicated as much as possible.

What’s making me feel all giddy inside about this review was not the speed or the volume of what was achieved.

It was that they felt genuinely cared for throughout the entire process - I can’t express how hard that is when it’s so stressful.

They made a brave call to walk away from a much larger agency and trust a growing team.

That decision came from hearing the same message consistently, whether on LinkedIn, podcasts, or in direct conversations.

At Alaya Property, we talk a lot about scaling care alongside growth, and this is what that looks like in practice.

None of us care whether you’re buying 1, 3 or 10 properties at once - we just really care about you, my gal.

To say we were stretched would be an understatement.

But now we know what we’re capable of.

PS - who put me in charge of responding to reviews lol

This brother paid his fee within 23mins of the invoice being sent to him.

Who do I need to pray to guarantee that we only get these clients from now on?

If a $30k holding cost is killing your soul.

Then you’re in the wrong market, my silly friend.

Man you know what’s a sucky thing to learn about yourself?

That you’re kind of just like everybody else - always chasing the next thing.

The growth that we’ve seen at Alaya Property hasn’t exactly made me feel “ahh this is noice, I can kind of cruise now and live a cute life with my partner”.

It’s been more like “that’s nice, what else can we do now?”

I was naive enough to genuinely believe that once I hit a milestone, I would feel settled.

I do not.

Despite the ridiculosity of 2025, my 2026 plans are just a bigger version of it. No doubt 2027 will be the same.

What I didn’t see coming was how quickly each “win” would become normal.

You hit one number and your brain immediately starts calculating the next. 

You grow the business and start thinking about scale. You achieve something you once obsessed over and within weeks it feels like the new baseline.

The goalposts just keep farking moving.

And the version of you who sacrificed sleep, health, and time to get there does not magically transform when you get there.

If you neglected your body on the way up, there’s a good chance you’ll keep neglecting it.

I am deeply ambitious and I love building things, but I am starting to question the quiet assumption that more will somehow fix what discipline and presence are meant to handle.

If you make yourself miserable on the journey, the destination will not rescue you.

At some point you have to ask whether you actually like the person you are becoming while you chase what you want.

I still don’t have an answer to that one yet.

While defining our values, 2 words kept punching my face.

Accountability and kindness.

The longer I lead this company, the more I think about how I want to shape it no matter what size it gets.

Now, one thing that works in my favour is that I have a fairly high EQ, which is helpful because according to my partner my IQ is the kid that eats crayons.

Hurtful but fair.

I think I have a pretty decent ability to notice when accountability starts becoming optional.

A bullshit radar, if you will.

The tricky part is that I don’t always trust it.

It feels intangible, so I talk myself out of it and assume I’m probably overthinking things.

I’ve been tested with ex-employees on this front.

There was very little ownership when things went wrong, a lot of deflection, and a tendency to point fingers instead of just saying, “hey, I fucked this up, sorry but here’s how we fix it.”

I kept making excuses, which still annoys me when I think about it.

Not because the behaviour was okay, but because I struggled to give that icky feeling the weight it deserved.

What I’m learning is that accountability and kindness usually show up together.

When one starts to disappear, the other isn’t far behind.

→ Pointing fingers at others instead of owning your part.

→ Talking around mistakes or having tantrums instead of simply saying, “hey, this one’s on me.”

I’m trying to lead this company with those things front and centre.

If you own the problem, I will back you, support you, and we will solve it together.

If you don’t, or you immediately default to “oh, but that was XYZ” - it’s time to say toodaloo.

We all make mistakes - that part is unavoidable. Lord knows I’ve made 14,000 of them since yesterday.

What matters is whether you take responsibility and how you treat the people around you when things get uncomfy.

I’m putting a lot of effort into scaling the culture along with the growth here.

It’s wayyyy harder than it sounds - actually far harder than the other scaling.

That means I’m also (very slowly) learning to trust my instincts more.

If honesty, accountability, and kindness are not part of someone’s natural cadence, they’re simply not the right fit for what we’re building.

I’m quite embarrassed about this thing about myself.

(I think) a lot of my “generosity” is driven by guilt.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve felt this almost irrational pull to help others.

My parents used to give me 5 dollarydoos a week in pocket money, and I would regularly give part of it away. 

I never really thought much of it, but I remember it just felt wrong to keep all of it when I could clearly see someone else seemed to need it more.

That wiring never really left over the next 2.5 decades.

Certain things still hit me in a way I can’t fully explain. Kids. Elderly peeps. Animals. There’s a heaviness that comes with seeing their struggle, that I find impossible to reconcile.

Over the years, that’s translated into being pretty loosey-goosy with my money when it comes to causes I care about.

Earlier this week, I looked at my 2025 numbers.

Spendee tells me that I gave roughly half of the salary I earned in my 1st corporate job at 23.

Half.

Now this is the part that embarrasses me.

For some reason - I still don’t understand - my first thought wasn’t pride.

My brain immediately defaulted to “This year maybe we can do the whole amount, hey”?

I find that so viscerally sad, man.

If a friend, my partner, or my future kid ever said that to me, I would have all the unsolicited wisdom ready to go.

Wisdom that I seem incapable of applying to myself.

Why has something that’s so important to me become an internal benchmark?

The shitty answer is that somewhere deep down, I feel like my time here has to justify itself. 

Like I was born into such luck, that I owe the world in proportion.

I don’t want compassion to turn into an internal arms race with myself.

And I hate that giving is yet another scoreboard where I’m chasing a number that will never quite satisfy me.

I’m incredibly grateful that I’m in a position to give at a scale that would’ve stunned 23yo me..

But I’m just still grappling with why 36yo me struggles to let that be enough.

I’m not really sure why I’m sharing this.

Maybe if you recognise something similar in yourself, you’ll know you’re not the only one.

Is it fair to say kids won’t afford a home in 20 years?

Something the missus & I have been talking about a lot.

Being in my seat, I’m seeing the housing market change right in front of my eyes.

A lot of people think my & my peers are a part of the problem because we advocate for investing in housing.

Maybe we are - idk 🤷🏽‍♂️

Would people stop investing if we didn’t exist? Property has been the storehouse of wealth long before little old Adi became a buyer’s agent.

But regardless, I’m seeing houses with a 6 or 7 and even 8 disappear right before my eyes 🥹

And I look the kids I don’t yet have and try to picture them at 18 or 20x staring at the same properties we’re buying for our clients today.

Casually worth 3x the amount they are today.

How are they supposed to save a deposit for that?

5% feels brutal.

10% feels fantastical.

And 20% is the equivalent of me getting my sugar cravings under control - not a real thing.

So does that mean we help them with a deposit?

Or do we force them to do it all on their own just like we did?

I believe in resourcefulness.

I believe that we should all earn what we get and feel the weight of our decisions - even if wrong in hindsight.

I would cry if I raised entitled asshole-y kids, who assume mum & dad will just “sort it out”.

No we won’t Timmy you littlr bastard.

But I also can’t pretend the system isn’t stacked against stupid little Timmy.

Prices are just escalating faster than my blood pressure watching the Winter Olympics.

Incomes can’t keep up with inflation.

It all just feels fucked 😭

By not helping, are we dooming them to failure?

By helping, are we dooming them to a different kind of failure?

I have no idea.

All this to say that parenting seems really hard.

Even when parenting is still a figment of your imagination.

Anyways, please buy my stuff so I can buy stupid Timmy a house.

One of my big boy lessons from last year?

Stop making myself so available to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Because trying to be a people pleaser who gave my time away like it was a bag of doritos was draining me.

For the first little while in my business, I said yes to almost every request for a call.

If someone wanted advice, I would send my calendar and carve out an hour without thinking too hard about it.

I told myself I was being generous because I genuinely do enjoy helping others.

If I am really honest though, I also liked feeling needed.

Over time I realised those calls were not free.

They were coming out of gym sessions, time with my partner, focus for clients, and most importantly, energy that belonged to my team.

As the business grew, the cost became far more expensive.

Every yes to a stranger was a quiet no to someone who had actually committed to me and my vision for Alaya.

I don’t do this anymore.

Now when people reach out - like they do almost every week - I rarely jump on calls now.

I ask them to send their questions and I reply with voice notes when I have the space.

It still lets me help, but it just looks materially different to what it used to.

For a while I felt selfish doing that - truth be told, I still feel asshole-y now about it.

But like Uncle Ben said - with great power, comes great responsibility.

While my power may not be great, the responsibility on my shoulders sure is.

taplio

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Redom Syed - Mortgage Broker

Adi Chanda

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The Battle

Redom Syed - Mortgage Broker

Adi Chanda

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Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Redom Syed - Mortgage Broker's LinkedIn Performance

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