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.

Helping You Build Wealth Through Property | Available 7 days 0404242033 - christianstevens@shorefinancial.com.au 🏠 🏠 🏠

As the Best Residential Mortgage Broker in Australia, I help people build wealth through property by providing tailored solutions to suit your needs and objectives.

I am passionate about helping first home buyers achieve their dream of homeownership, and I have founded First Home Buyers Australia, the largest support group for this segment in the country. I have also been recognised as the Best Mortgage Broker in Australia and the winner of multiple industry awards, including Broker of the Year three times. 

I'm always open to growing my professional network and sharing my expertise in property investment, online marketing, and customer relationship management. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at christianstevens@flintgroup.au or book a call with me directly on my calendar.

Christian Stevens - Mortgage Broker

Great morning with Vinicius Gomes from the #FlintMedia team, shooting the first video of our next big project 🏡

Christian Stevens 

Building Australia’s First $10B+ Brokerage! We’re Looking for Great People to Join the Flint Journey. Be Part of Something Bigger 🚀

No alternative text description for this image

taplio

The Battle

Redom Syed - Mortgage Broker

Christian Stevens - Mortgage Broker

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreRedom Syed - Mortgage Broker's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreChristian Stevens - Mortgage Broker's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Redom Syed - Mortgage Broker

Christian Stevens - Mortgage Broker

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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

Performance ScoreChristian Stevens - Mortgage Broker's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRedom Syed - Mortgage Broker's LinkedIn Performance