This Broker Generated 1,300+ Leads in 9 Months - Here’s How You Can Too

Welcome to episode one of Beyond the Numbers with Christian Stevens my first ever guest Someone who's had the biggest Impact in my professional career one of the best brokers in the country You also happens to be my business partner read him side welcome welcome to me. That's pretty awesome And I am absolutely buzzed to be here. I'm super impressed to be your first guest as well So thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm pretty excited to do this together. I Obviously on your story intimately, but for a lot of people listening I'd love to just dive into What you were doing before broking what you've been doing since and a bit about your journey. Can you just tell me I guess where this all started? Yeah, how far back do I go here? So I think I talked about this publicly recently when We're at the awards night together But my journey into broking actually began I put the inception pretty much 20 years ago Where it became very obvious to me that I wanted to help people with money That objective was pretty clear so early on in my life. You became clear when we were growing up and we had some money problems at home and I began fixing them early for my family together And I took on like the responsibility of Working with my parents as a 14 year old boy and being like hey, we need to come up with a plan here We need to behave differently. We need to act differently and those conversations were Oddly exciting for a 14 year old. It's weird to be talking about budgets and things like that with your parents so that's where the pursuit or passion for helping people with money began and Broking is just the best way in the Australian economy at least to be engaging with households and to be talking to mums and dads and to be helping with money Most Australians don't have financial planners and things like that So they go to their brokers to act as they're kind of money coach even in the process of getting debt so That's why I love what I do. I love being in this industry and that's the reason why I chose it It became very clear to me very early as soon as I got what brokers actually do and What they're dead at a is like I'm like I want to be that You've helped thousands of brokers over the last 15 years 100 billions of dollars of loans Before broking what were you doing as a job? So I went to uni and studied as an economist And I was fortunate enough to get a job at the federal treasury Which is a placing camera that helps the government with their budgets and helps public policy decisions It was actually my dream job It's really crazy, but from about 16 I had two pictures up on my wall right on my bed. I want a doctor I knew pretty early that I like I didn't know exactly what they did But I was just like I did a little bit of research and it was like I want to work at the RBA or I want to work at Treasury That sounds really nerdy, but I think people who want to be economists They often have that dream. They often have the dream of I want to work at these two preeminent institutions in Australia And that was really targeted. I will find my way to this place Didn't really know what to expect, but I really wanted to get there and I did as a graduate And I did that for a few years before I began a more working career Was it was it was it weird for you to leave Being an economist Given that it's quite a prestigious career. It was their pressure from family around What are you doing to go and leave such a stable and respected job to go and start mortgage broke Because at the time mortgage breaking wasn't really a aspirational career When you started and when I started all those years ago I would have thought that was an interesting change when you were kind of on the up In what you know you said it was your dream job Yes Everyone thought I was nuts. Yeah for sure my family wondered was like is something wrong like are you leaving? Yeah, when I handed in my resignation my boss looked at me is just like what are you doing? Yeah, like you love it here And I did I do like you know, it's a place that I would I say it openly one day I would like to go back at a place like that It is the way I view it is my the pursuit of my career is going to be a function of Either I'm building a business and having lots of fun doing it or I'm working in the public service Using my skills for the purpose of you know improving the well-being of Australians that that's what I want to do So I think you've had bigger impact as a broker or in that pursuit than You could have as an economist at Treasury Yes, yes at an individual level for sure And you do get that every time you make change every time you take risk People are going to look at you and think wow you are crazy Like beyond crazy is what especially in my community like in my community That's what I was getting at because and and my doctor's comment before for anyone I'm wondering what obviously Britams comes from a Bengali family and You know, there's a certain role certain job jobs that are Very important and I just I just I can imagine the pressure that would have All the questions that would have arose from that decision at that point in your life Given that you've just finished university you're on this like you're as great momentum you're kicking all the boxes and all the sudden You say hey mum and dad. I'm gonna leave and start as a broker I didn't ask actually I didn't I didn't go to anyone so It's kind of seem a little bit unhinged, but when I believe in something I think about it I reflect on it and If I truly believe I can be successful at it. I'd go and make it happen So I didn't go to my parents to decide or anyone actually I spoke to my partner about it But it was more of a conversation rather than seeking permission or approval I just knew that if I gave this a shot I'll find a way to be successful at it I did my research and my homework But you can't go like this is probably a little less of people You can't go to people haven't achieved what you want to achieve before that's for the opinion Yeah, last 10 people are getting different answers often it's very conflicting Actually said it's last week in a meeting that I only take I guess Feedback from people who have achieved what I want to achieve or are better than me or more successful because otherwise The answer's never gonna be what you probably should hear um see let's treasury with at the time One of your colleagues is your best mate still yes And also one of our business partners curse uh Talk to me about the first couple of years. I guess leaving Starting as a broker and leaning into the content and and just doing things differently And I guess with the results and and how are you able to achieve success so quickly because You know respectfully Being really nerdy and Putting yourself out there and social media don't normally go hand in hand You don't find a lot of people who are comfortable in front of a camera, but you seem to have Done both well Mm-hmm. I think a lot of people listening are Scared to get in front of a camera yeah concern what other people think um Are worried about how they perceived taught me through those first couple of years because I know there was some some big Wenders and big lessons as well look in those early years I'm pretty sure you would have had this as well. Like you have a lot of self-doubt Whether you're sure whether you make it or not. Yeah, and for me This is a little bit um trying into the the video content journey as well, but For me i had something to lose because my reputation felt like it was at stake I had chosen very intentionally and worked my socks off for like five Plus years to get into that building and then develop a reputation in that building You know someone who's gonna make it here have a good career here And then I left it There was a lot of people that if I failed they'll be like what hey, what a miserable miserable story that is so There was a lot of self-doubt self-doubt so my you one was actually a lot of Consuming all these mindset type content. I remember like listening to les brown Is this guy who would just be like you can do it leave the dream? You know, I remember listening to him every single morning for a year and like I don't listen to him anymore But I was brain training myself to get rid of the self-doubt Uh That was the biggest challenge in you one plus it was lonely I went from being an environment of you know There's 50 grads were part of a group part of a community people don't talk about that enough At the loneliness starting business It's my bedroom. I wake up and I'm like what do I do? I go for one room to the other desk Nothing to do. Yeah, but you were starting to be like what what is work you could have decided yourself I started my business right from the get go all by myself in the bedroom next to me with no experience in the industry uh No real idea with what I was doing and it was just find a way to be successful in that environment Just find a way so I went about executing a little bit of a plan It did work pretty quickly I use what I had as well as an extra-jury of content. I understood markets probably better than most mortgage brokers at the time and I talked about that And I just shared and shared and shared and people found it a little bit interesting because it was a slight deviation or a take that was like Would never seen that a lot I guess that's why you're you niche down in Special investors which kind of goes hand to hand with your It's deep insights into economy and how that all works. So How Talk to me about I guess the business that you built with confidence for the business called confident finance You had the team offshore. Yeah, it's just you incur this riding loan So did you have other loan runs involved or what other team look like? It was pretty small team over What 10-year journey We it was Curtis and I we never had lead flow problem. It was a more of a processing problem So it just put pause on everything because most brokers it's the opposite Yes, you know, I think we've had hundreds of hundreds of meetings this year alone with brokers and a question that often comes up is I'd leads or you know Around leads Where your leads coming from Today 80% of our new business comes from our YouTube channel and our podcast It's pretty crazy because I've only began that a couple years ago But people see it now people see my face everyone just very honestly You tell me though there how many bookings if you had in 12 months of the YouTube channel And then this is bookings the people that have booked in to talk to you about finance not leads from advertising online or anything You don't spend any money on advertising it's purely people that have warm leads in your inbox of wanting to talk to you Yeah, so I looked at the stats there. There was roughly 1300 people in the last nine months from when I began tracking Yeah, yeah, there's more than a hundred clicks into our diary a month where people want to speak to us And this is a crazy part if you if anyone goes and sees that podcast you'll see I don't sell Like I don't ever say that's that's you know if you look at your pocket you also got a hundred hundred videos on YouTube Sorry a thousand videos on YouTube That's most people watching are probably watching you for a long time have felt You know that trust economy have got to know you and thought you know I've actually made a decision to go with him and then when they book in you're not selling and this is what I'm trying to tell people about Social media in general is I've never once said hey if you want to refire dance reach out to me and I can like that's the not the purpose of content The purpose is providing value selling through education being a thought leader And then people naturally come to you People will reach out and say look up and listening for five six 12 months And that conversion is almost a hundred percent really unless they're not ready to buy It's not a hard sell at all, which is the power of building a strong personal brand online Yeah, sure you're the master added you've done it You know really really well in our industry. Yeah, it's brilliant like you know every broker that I speak to has some thought of you They know who you are and that that is a huge huge win if people know you exist and people know who you are you have a chance They don't know you you don't have a chance. How are they going to find you? We spend all of our time on our phones. Yeah, you know people are not driving past a billboard anymore and being like there's my mortgage broker It doesn't work any very hard to measure RLI from printing You know QR codes and whatnot that a bigger value is in video and regular daily content So back to my question before your team structure. Yes finance. What did that look like? So we had Curtis as our sort of principal broker and myself I would bring in clients Curtis and I would work on them together do a lot of strategies together And then we'd have a really strong support team behind us. Yeah That support team would probably have three sort of key roles. One was credit analyst that would look at all the scenarios and the advice deal with banks get credit approvals through and deliver advice at speed that was what we're looking to do at scale two because we started writing a lot of loans and we quickly worked out Holy moly we're gonna have to work a hundred hours a day to help yeah exactly So we worked with credit hours we gave them the files to go do all the legwork in Nepal. Yeah, yes So We had a group of credit analysts Many of them or all of them are still with flint today and have come across from confidence finance to flint And then we had loan processes who would also help with the data the entry the customer management from the approval process all the way to settlement and the other two different roles Yeah, because a lot of breakers will have one offshore support that does the end-to-end Or just from docs to settlement or maybe some post-semin but I think as you grow you need to understand that that's two if not three or four different roles being credit Docs loan processing post-semin. Yes, really because there are different roles and um I think you find that if you can really train people up in a specific verticals of that child for sure You can turn a lot more business without compromising on the customer experience which is another big issue is How do you grow your business without um Making on too much or blowing it so aes or not having a positive customer experience and look I said this is someone the other day. There's always going to be Some damage there like you're never going to be able to have that one-on-one unbelievable experience every single client that you used to have in the early years because you only had Three clients a month You know when you get to 2030 40 50 60 clients a month It's all around process. It's all around communicating with them Uh, but there's a lot of automation there. There's a team communication and I guess your job is just to run that team better What have you learned I guess by because you've done the two thousands two thousands and thousands of loans You had to do it again. There's something that you do differently or you was Yes, so much amount of the go-to We we know a lot more today. Yeah each other each other living the lives that we have in the careers that we have We know so much more about how to actually grow this and build this then when we were doing it Uh, and we probably were working so hard that we didn't even know But you touched on something about roles Earlier and how different roles in this in the process are kind of carved up and you have specialization in those roles so you can actually bring that to the front end too uh, so I specialize what drives our business is me getting in front of a camera and sharing whatever random opinion I have about whatever is happening and building trust at scale with Commun and building communities with people that is my highest value Time return that I could possibly have so my role is to do that in my team that I run where we're broken That's my job The other parts of the job is so many more the sales where you pick up the phone you speak to people you you communicate with them There's sales and strategy kind of go hand in hand in in the broken industry We typically don't break that up because the customer experience is is often better where the sales and strategy are together That's different in different industries, but in ours that's how that works Uh, I don't do that much of that anymore but I do What I need to do and focus on the highest dollar value use of my time and then break everything else into roles both on the front end and at the back end and Then it's creating a culture of like the customer comes first. How do we treat this customer as if they are the only customer we have even in this You know pipeline that we have That's kind of the goal. So you were there confidence finance 10 years Top 100 broke up seven years in a row Writing you know to 300 million a year As a business When I came to you About 12 months ago and said look I've got a big vision and a big plan but I need help i need someone who can who can deliver on on on the dream Um, I think marketing branding positioning PR vision growth is one thing um Systems processes Delivering on that is another and most brokers aren't good at both And I think when I came to you i was very aware of your skill set Very aware of what you were good at and you decided to cannibalize What was one of the best brokerages in the country to merge with uh My business and our our business um Talk me through that because a lot of people have asked you that question. Yeah, why firstly why why fuck would you do that? And secondly um Why at that point? Because you've been doing it for 10 years you had an asset that was worth a significant amount of money You could have sold and probably never worked again What what drove you to decide to merge and go all in on On i guess a uh A big vision that was literally at the time only only that a vision That's a good question i think we've actually spoken about it says clearly before how we yeah so yeah We may as well just get it on camera and talk through it Uh There were a number of reasons for it But underlying i think it's ambition uh to Impact more people and create a wonderful wonderful business a much larger business and what i was doing at confidence finance Second reason is reading the tea leaves a little bit as to where our industry is heading and what we need to do as an industry to succeed together Uh That's probably the economist in me thinking about the future a little bit not just the now And the third was you know we did a lot of due diligence We spent a lot of time together getting to know each other working through it there's this is probably a little bit of a compliment to you, but there's real belief that that I have in you, I believe in your skills, I believe in your abilities, I believe in the power of everything that you're doing, I believe in you as a CEO, as a business owner, as a partner. That was key. That's, if I didn't believe that, then I wouldn't do it. So we have to work together in a way to harness both of our skills and continue to level up this business and execute a ridiculous vision. Like it's this beautifully crazy vision that, you know, when you say it out loud, it's just like, well, it's cool. I like that. I like that. Firstly, thank you for those comments. It's nice to hear that because not that you don't give me a complaint all the time, but it's always nice to hear positive things because look, I think when you're creating something big and you're making a lot of noise, what comes with that is usually a lot of hate, normally for people who haven't achieved what you want to achieve and don't understand it. I don't think too much about it. I've been part of what I've done for a long time, but this morning, I went to send a message to the whole team. There was 101 people in the group chat, which is wild, given that there was about eight or something when we started and been, I think, by the end of this month, it'll be a thousand percent growth in headcount in 12 months where I opened five offices, and one overseas team of 60 or something as well. It's been aggressive growth, but not aggressive as in stupid. I, everything we've done has been calculated. We understand the trajectory of what we're doing. It's just pretty crazy. What can be achieved when you've got two people that are aligned together that want to make something happen? Unless it's not just us, it's the business as well. I think the power you can have as a business when your team is aligned has been astronomical. I think the rise is exciting and daunting at times, but I think next year, I'm excited to see all the hard work that we've put in this year come to fruition. And obviously, the first 12 months being honest, you and I, a lot of what we're doing, we didn't even know what we were doing. And I think it's important to say that other people can hear because a lot of people, brokers obviously will look at other brokers and thinking, how do they have it all together and how are their business so great? You see the wins online, but there's a lot of shit happening in the backgrounds. Is it absolute disaster and a lot of lessons and a lot of things we never do again. And I think it's important to be a little bit more realistic about growing a business. It's not easy. And it's absolutely fine if things don't work out or if you fail or if you learn lessons. And I think it's important to understand that that's all part of creating something big. - Yeah, sure. I think you touched on something you need, a quality you need, this ride that we've been on this year and the journey that we're on over the next few years at the very least in the sort of vision that we're going towards, you need to be resilient in the chair that we sit in. The other business owner we had dinner with said it's like eating broken glass, broken glass regularly. And we do make mistakes. Of course we make mistakes. Sometimes higher the wrong people. We sometimes make the wrong decisions here. We mess it up here and there. That happens at a day to day level. You just have to react quickly and you can't get knocked down. - Yeah. - And this is the craziest thing. I actually think that most people, observationally, seeing Arthur great mortgage brokers and then seeing how they would behave with all the information that I'm processing day to day and having to react. It just bogs them down a little bit and they can't continue moving forward and then they get wedded into the detail of that mistake and then they're so fearful of making another one that they don't keep moving forward. We just operate at speed and the speed of execution is so, so important for this economy that we're living in at the moment where the pace of change is ridiculously fast, you have to be willing to make mistakes, you have to be quickly reflect on it. Course correct, go again and do that with a really, really fast time cycle. We've been doing that on repeat this year and I'm planning embedding that culture within our business or the period ahead because it's the right approach in this set of circumstances that we're in. - We're sort of communicating with the team. You and I are great communicators with how to know a single issue in 12 months and I guess we're very relaxed and staying in each other's staying separate lanes but ultimately together can provide something much more substantial. Going for confidence finance, you can cut us working together and hiring a couple of people offshore and then almost suddenly having 100 plus staff. How do you communicate a scale? And I guess how has it changed in the last 12 months because as a lot of people grow a business that becomes difficult, especially if you've got an offshore team as well. How do you motivate them? How do you communicate with them? How do you stay relevant in their lives? They're not being too involved and it's just all this things that I never really thought too much about until this year when you've got heads of 20 different departments and different teams and pods and different brokers and different needs, different locations. How do you communicate at scale effectively? - I think you might learn a little bit about my process behind the scenes here but I'm incredibly intentional about how I want other people to feel when I converse with them and when I interact with them. So this would have changed at different points in this year. So when I first took on the job, I thought the most important part of what I needed to communicate was unity. Unity between me and you, unity between Curtis, me and you and unity between our leaders and us. The reason that was so important to me is everyone else within the business when we're hiring, they need to see, they need to know that we are good and we are aligned and we are working together on a future. So that was a message I was sharing. This was around February and March. We went around the country and that was the message I was sharing. We are but other people need to feel it as well. So it was purposefully showing that to the team that we are in this together. This is a long journey. This is a marriage that we are in. It isn't a tiny little girlfriend, boyfriend experience where I'm going to go somewhere else very, very quickly. Unity was key. So how do I transcend that message at scale? You do that when you clarify exactly what it is. One word, it's pretty easy to do. It's just sharing stories about you and what we're doing together. It's communicating with the team regularly about their importance and why we are doing what we're doing and the real belief that I had. I also had to bring 12 people with me. How do I communicate? They are just like, who's this guy? I chose to work with you. So we had to bring them together. I was talking for a while then I think you had to go and have a meeting with them and say, hey, I know things are perfect. But I've decided to merge with another business and what was the time you're going to have 10 times the amount of staff and your roles are going to change in managing expectations. I think that's a broker obviously managed. Clientics are patients and partner expectations. But then when you start to grow a business, having employee and team expectations as well, it's just another unique level or layer that a lot of people don't tell you about. For sure. And you've got to experience it and learn. I'm sure some people would love to hear the structure of our business. I do want to run through quickly because obviously you could probably talk for an hour about it. But talk about I guess the different teams, how it's structured, unsure, offshore, pods with the brokers. What we've learned and what we're implementing and why it's important for the modern broker. And I don't know, say modern broker because I've often say modern broker because it's different to how it is to be traditionally. Like you need to have a team structure differently. How you getting businesses different. And there's not many businesses who are setting, I'm just trying to say positive things about us, but there's not many businesses that I'm aware of that are supporting brokers the way they to be supported, but also showing them how to generate business as a modern broker. But can you run through why we've structured the team the way we have and how that's best for performance for our team? I think we actually have kind of done that in all the conversations that we've got to this point. It has been the whole design of our business has been designed around what does it take to be a stray as best mortgage broker. That's the question I'm actually asking myself. What does it take to become that? We have some experience in there because there's a group of great mortgage brokers and both of us would be there in terms of the volumes we write and the lessons that we've had and we've been out of 10 plus years. So what are all the lessons that I picked up over the last 10 years? Have people in designated roles? Have your brokers focus on winning attention in this world in particular and go all in on winning attention and trust at scale? That is what we're teaching our brokers who are our key players on the sporting field bringing in clients and working directly with clients. That's the message to them and we do that really, really well. Kind of encourage a culture of that. We've got an employee type social media model and all directors are really encouraged to go and do that. And then the support team looks just like I spoke about. Everyone has designated roles where you have experts in their field doing what they are best at. Supporting, let's support team to the main players on the pitch. Using a sporting reference again, they. You're a favourite. My favourite. So my job here in all of this, and our job is probably like with border and more of the managers that are just piecing it all together and inspiring a vision and inspiring a way of working. So that then leaves the brokers to go and focus on what is most important, generating leads, generating trust, putting themselves out there. And that is the same lesson that I've picked up where my biggest value add, my biggest time that I spend on is. You know, and doing exactly that. And so do our brokers. And the rest of it is, you know, work through with a model behind the scenes that are looking. That's looking to give them as much time back in their day as possible. Because if you break your day down into four sections, you've got new business. You client work, you've got credit, strategy, and then you've got loan processing, you've got post-seller, right? So if you can eliminate those last three, you're basically giving yourself 80% of your day back. So we always say this, you can grow the equivalent of eight years and 24 months in the right environment with the right support. Oh, if you look at that top 10 broker list, or no, the top 10 brokers are. Most of them are content creators, really. They're on YouTube. They're on podcasts. They're doing socials. The modern broker is a BDM. Real is the way that I always put it. Your job is to generate business, produce content, communicate with your clients, and have a good team underneath you that allows you to grow faster or deliver more outcomes at scale with their compromise and the customer experience. So we've had brokers come in, I think Ben Roberts is a good example, doing, you know, 70, 80 mil, and then you'll do 250 or something this year, or maybe even more than that, you know, two, three, everything growth. How is that achievable? And the reason why it is, because I did that myself, like I remember the first couple of years, how hard it was doing everything from end to end, not enough hours in a day, always stressed I couldn't get any momentum and all of a sudden I outsourced both my loan processing credit. And I went from, I think, 30 to 120 million one year. And I thought, that's crazy. Like, all of a sudden I'm in the top 1% because back then, you know, 100 mil was, you know, the epitome of success is a broker. And I remember thinking, if I could do a whole week's worth of work in one day, imagine if I did this for six months, or even for a month, what that would mean for my life and my career. You recently won FBWA National Finals Broker of the Year. Congratulations. Thank you. I saw the speech. It was nice that you were there with your beautiful wife. And I think it's funny, if I think of all the awards that I won over the years, the one that was the best was when Nicolene came with me and thank God I'd won. And maybe you'll all good otherwise. But that means so much because, the sacrifices that she's had to make as well to allow you to have the success, she's obviously successful in her own right. But as a family, you've got two beautiful daughters, it's hard to manage work life. And this is the conversation we have a lot of time with Broker. She's managing that work life balance and not having to compromise on being a present father or a present husband or being good at business. And what excites me the most about our structure and when other Brokerages have the same kind of support is you can still be present or spill spilled and time do things that you want to do. That doesn't have to be just being present. You might want to go traveling or you might want to have other interests that you're passionate about. But also perform well. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And I see Broker's working 15, 16, 17 hours a day and they're miserable and they hate their job. And I don't understand why if you can tackle the ownership piece, you know, I think it's better to work with other people. It's exciting to be an environment where you can learn from others and have that connection. Because as you said before, it's lonely being a solo broker on your own and then you end up living for the PD days and other experiences because that's the only contact you have with anyone outside of your bedroom or your house. So in your speech you said that your YouTube channel, I guess social media in general had been the reason why you'd won the award. Hmm, I agree. What's been your biggest look? Because the conversation always is people are so scared to put themselves out there. If I, when I saw your first video, it was so shit. And like, you said, "No, you're right." I said to people more time, I was like, "Go and look at the first video who I've put on YouTube." It's genuinely embarrassing. Yeah. And but now you see you a thousand videos later. It's like you've had professional, you know, on camera media training and it's flawless and you can just read one piece of paper and talk about it for 10 minutes, right? But that's something that's come instantly. You've had to work on that. You've gone to, you know, you've gone out. I think active classes, you've gone and had training on how to present. You understand what a hook is and what a story tell. And I think anyone doing anything need to understand you're going to be pretty shit at first. And it takes time to develop a skill. And it's exactly the same for presenting and social media. Like, I, for me, now I can pump out 20, 30 posts in an hour for a month without even thinking, right? Because it's just so easy. But I remember back in the day, I'd spend an hour thinking about, you know, what, what if I post it and say, what kind of photo, what order of my photo is going to be in? Because like firstly, no one cares. And secondly, the hardest part is just hitting post. And getting it out there. Sure. We've done a couple of really good sessions with the different offices around video content. Can you run me through how to post a good video? I guess how to tell a good story or like what? If someone is, if someone's thinking, I want to put some content out there. I want to put some videos first thing down to sending a niche, obviously. But how do you actually press play? Like what's the first thing you can do to put your first video up? Because that's very, very daunting for a lot of people. It is, it is. I think it's not technical. I think it's mental. One thing that I feel like I do well at 35, that I didn't do well at 24 now that I've been in the industry for 12 years, is it's being brave. That is what you need. You need to be brave enough to be willing to be laughed at. You laughed at me. You might not know this, but you sent me a text message after I started posting content. And you're like, "Ha ha." You actually said this. What a photo, right? It was funny. You laughed at me. I got about hundreds of these messages at the time. It's like they laughed and they followed her. This is an interesting thing. You're always going to get a bit of slack from mates and family and everyone going, "What are you doing? You're going to be awkward. You're going to be weird shit." But you know. To your life, listen to me. This is going to stand beyond. I take on. I don't know if I'm doing this right, but this is just who I am. When we are caring for people or in charge of people, which we are now of 100 plus people, it's my number one lesson that I would like to share out loud. I don't say it to many people because it could be a bit confronting. But be brave. Across your career, end in your personal life sometimes as well. Just be brave. You've got to be brave to be kind to someone and risk getting hurt. You've got to be brave to turn that camera on, hit record and hit post and get laughed at. You've got to be brave to do whatever you actually want to do in life. That's stopping you and holding you back. So the key to video is actually in the mind, not the technical part. It's, "Do you have enough bravery? Are you courageous enough to go and actually chase what you want?" Noting that it is a little bit scary. That's kind of the key message there. It's interesting because we had those two sessions last week with two of our new officers and I guess a couple of new, newer brokers that built it up in their head and had been very anxious about the idea of producing content within 20 minutes. So, okay, this is actually nowhere near as bad. As I thought, in the end of the day, they produced some good videos. They're probably not going to be the best videos you're ever going to produce. But at least they're doing it. And the next is a lot of videos that we better. And the next lot of videos will be better after that. So, first, right? Just, yeah, it's interesting. And also, there's so many good resources online. You can go and look at how to present like water hookers, how does tell a story where you can, you camera angles and you know, you don't need fancy equipment or you can literally just do your iPhone. And call the no-no-no. Like, you know about it. Most people don't. Telling people about what you do. Stories about client wins. It's a very easy way of building a lot of attention. Quickly. And standing out because I can probably think of only a handful of brokers in our industry. Normally they're the good ones producing content. But, you know, they all start at zero. And I think it's important to remember that everyone does start at zero. You know, you miraculously wake up with 10,000 YouTube subscribers and doing thousands of bookings you know, a year. Like, that's something that you've worked relentlessly on for a long time. You got to get better. I use my framework for everything I do. Even from that 15 year old experience, I call it my mastery framework. I obsess with what one thing is at a particular point in time. I get better at it. I study it. Mostly I review myself. Repeatedly on that singular topic. So for a while, it's property investing. Follow the same framework. And then it's just repeat that cycle over and over again and put in the reps. So with video and with communicating and with leadership, these are my current ones that I'm working through, the mastery of these components and getting better and better at. That process works with video so well and you get so much data, you get so much feedback. Sometimes you might see me sitting at my desk watching my own videos and you do that yesterday. Yeah, other people, what they see is like, you know, some people are just like, hey, he's checking himself out and things like that. But what I'm actually hearing is the tonality in my voice. I'm hearing whether I'm pausing, I'm hearing whether I'm using filler words. I'm hearing myself and auditing myself. I'm going through this mastery framework. I'm seeing if I'm adding entertainment to what I'm actually saying and being engaging. That obsession is why that podcast that we've run has improved dramatically over a 12, 24 month time period. The why behind it, this, this bit, I really enjoy. The why behind it is a little bit unhinged, but I do not like losing and I absolutely hate it. I don't like being the absolute best at what I can be and the best version of myself. That's from that child would experience and it's what's required to live my life and pull myself up and pull my family up from everything that they've gone through. The underlying thing to all of that is I have an obsession with winning and I will do what it takes to win. That mastery framework is something that people are not willing to do. They're just not doing it and hence they keep producing the same results. But that's what winners do. Winners focus on where they are not good at, what they want to be good at and then make it happen. That same framework has just been applied in different subject matters at different points in time. That's why I reflect back on things and just go through the same process. It's my framework for getting better at something and you do that for 15 years. You end up quite good at different skill sets and somehow you end up in a chair like mine which I feel incredibly privileged to be in. What's next to you look like from a content perspective for you? It's like I guess now you've learnt what works, what doesn't. What are you going to do next year? He's just going to triple down on what you've been doing or if you've got some other ground plans, I actually don't know the answers by the way. I want to scale up like this. I think content can be a little bit like this. I think I'm on a journey somewhere around here. Essentially this time next year I want to 10x my views, 10x my audience, 10x the level of reach that I have and have at such a large impact that I can't even remember what it was like to be sitting in this chair and have this amount of people know who I am. To go and achieve that, that is a ridiculous, ridiculous goal because that does. If I 10x that literally, at least on YouTube platforms, it pretty much puts me straight up the top or up there with two or three property players that have achieved that. I understand the importance of that because if you have that audience and you have that trust and you have that community. Yeah, like people, yeah, it's just huge. All the best players in Australia in the Australian property industry have that. So that's the goal. The how is, it's a bit insane, but I plan on producing four long form videos a week, two podcasts, one, so six long form videos per week on YouTube every week. That's 300 plus videos, lost the math there. It's around 300 videos long form next year and then I just want to almost statistics to kind of level up the map. And sure, everything else in between. It's funny, you were in the office the other day and you were on a phone call and then you just put your phone down, ran over, put a mic on, pumped out two videos, came back on the phone again. You've got to a point now that it's just an extension of you. It's not an awkward. A lot of people will need an hour to get set up and you've mastered the ability to just read a piece of paper and talk absolute rubbish for 10 minutes, which is a gift. So congratulations. Even for myself. It's funny. It's like watching and if you send the Wolf of Wall Street, we're Leonardo DiCaprio, DiCaprio, sorry, behind the scene, where he just clicks into action and all of a sudden he's just an elevated version of himself. He's not a different person, but obviously you understand how to get attention, you understand how to add value, which has been really interesting to watch because I learn enormous amount from you every day, but especially on that content space, getting the confidence to start this podcast. Over the last 12 months, well, something you've learned about yourself that you didn't know, I guess that's always a big question because we're in a very different place than we were sitting down at Cafe in mascot 12 months ago. It's so far from where we were that it's hard to describe to people. What have you learned? I guess. The most wonderful part of this job, it's crazy. It can be hard, but it gives you a mirror to you every single day. I've so many conversations with so many people and the words I say impact so many people now. That is news. That is news to me as well. It's not like I tell Kurt or something and I just say casually. Yeah, it has impact. If I use my words a little bit casually, it can have an impact on other people and how they feel valued and that's so important to our lives, our career growths and Flint's vision. The mirror tells me a lot all the time. I look in it and I try and reflect back on it as much as possible. One thing that I've learned, the big takeaway is I have a lot of self belief in where Flint is going. Much more than I did when we were sitting in the chair a year ago because I know exactly where we are. I know we're going to be successful. I know we're on the journey of that and I know we are the right people to be sitting in the chairs leading it at least right now as the custodians of the business. That has been, that's what the mirror has told me and the reason why it's told me that is because of the impact on people that we can have doing what we do. That's a really positive one and another one is actually from hanging around you every day. Just before this, I got a text message on my phone saying that me and you combined have you know, we've just did over a hundred million in this single month. My team has just done over 50 million in this single month as well in those numbers. If you ask me how many months did I do over 50 million? Ten years? That I did? Zero. Not one. So my big lesson here is surround yourself with the absolute best players that you can possibly have around you compete sometimes. Healthily, you know, that's a healthy competition. A little bit of healthy competition. Compete sometimes. Have the right culture, have the right environment and you will level up so much more. It's funny because in any other industry, we think of, you know, our sports analogies, we're training for anything. You normally go to training camp with other good athletes and you you want to be the best. You train with the best. But when you think about business, a lot of time it doesn't translate the same when it should. Like I know I've learned the most from being around others. Like Peter Peter mentor, she's Peter Peter learning is without it out the best thing you can ever do. Like the PD days and everything else are relevant really in comparison to what you can learn from it on the broke. You spend an hour with a good broker who's running a good business. You will learn more in that hour than you could learn 10 years on your own. And that's the power of being a business with other people that have achieved what you want to achieve. What's something, I guess the same question, but back at you, what's the, what's something you've learned about me? Last four months. You didn't know before. Probably a few things. This one's under the service. It matters a lot to me. Probably shouldn't because this is where business partners, but it does matter to me. You're personally the image that you have out there and the who you are as an individual. I spend more time with you than I probably spend with anyone else over the course of the year. You might be the same for you as well. I don't know if we should have more time with Nicolino or Marcelo. Or mean, but you're really kind-hearted as well. You're a very kind person. You care about people deeply when our team needs us, like properly needs us. It has a moment, these are typically personal moments. You're the first person to go there and be like, I'm here for you. You put Arthur people's interests first, not yours, in the moments they need at the most. That is something that I've loved to get to know about you and I value it a lot. Whether it's required for us as business partners, I don't know, but I've definitely valued seeing that side of you. I didn't know that beforehand. It's not something you post about. It's not on your Instagram stories. You don't share it as well. You don't have a single post about this part of who you are, but it's there. I really enjoyed that side of things. Oh, nice man. Thank you. Are you welcome? It's actually just around me off completely. It's a question of what my question was. We could probably end this out. Okay, but you're blushing, man. We've got, we've got, we've only got 15 minutes left. Talk to me about overcoming challenges. I think I've had my fair share of challenges over the last 24 months. It's not probably where I presumed I would be. Where we are now is unbelievable, but the journey to get here has been hard. But also, if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be in this situation. So I'll be a big believer in everything that happens for a reason and nothing that happened. wasn't, you know, the thing is, isn't that big of an issue, but it definitely shapes the person that you are. The fact your family lost their house about you got two beautiful daughters, the pressures of family and business, shape the person that you are. How do you overcome, you know, challenges and afterwards for loss, you know, we've hired some wrong people, we've made some silly decisions, we've spent a lot of money on things, we probably wouldn't spend money on again, but again, it doesn't really bother me too much and it's funny because there's certain people who would, you know, try and attack value or attack things that don't work out when, you know, most people have things that don't work out all the time. It's a catch-22 being in the spotlight, right? So making a lot of noise, you know, putting people up on pedestal, putting business up, if things don't work out, then the catch-22 of that is obviously, then you have to explain to people why things didn't work out. So for you, I guess, how do you deal with loss? That's probably a bit of question. Stems all the way back in terms of my learnings here. So as hard as things are now, respectfully, I mean this, I don't mean to take any offense to this at all, but this is easy. This is so, so easy. I was a 14-year-old boy and there was one night, my dad's the most stoic man I've ever met in my life. He doesn't show any emotion. There's one night, he comes down the stairs and I'm there in bed, in downstairs where I shouldn't be because my bedroom's upstairs next to his. I'm hiding away, talking to some girl on the phone. I was young, I was 14 years old and I was pretty sure he heard me and he was coming down the stairs like, "step, step, step." I could feel it. I'm like, "game over." I have no idea what he was going to do. The consequence on me was going to be pretty freaking big. There he goes, "My life, that's what I was thinking." I quickly hid the phone, got really silent, pretend I was sleeping downstairs. But he didn't come to see me. He was going to the bathroom and we had a bathroom on the other side of the house where no one would ever go. It was just the outdoor bathroom and he went there in the middle of the night and I had no idea what was going on so I sort of tipped over. This was the only time I've ever seen. I didn't even see it, but I heard my dad. He was crying. He just broke down in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Away from everyone, I understood it a little bit later. That's the day I knew we were in trouble. I was like, something's seriously wrong. That is hard. That's very hard. Like, writing a business, everything that we're doing is just, it's so much easier. I should be clear, sometimes this happens a lot when I tell this story is, I want it to be known that I'm not the victim here in this situation. We are the victims. The situation that my dad found himself in is his own doing. He made mistakes financially. The family lost the home because they made choices that were poor. Those outcomes happened. There's probably an element of victim mentality and blaming others for this. Very, very early on. Pretty much from that day. That's when the treasury posters went up because I tried to make a plan and worked out what I was going to do. Made it very clear. From that day, I was going to make a better life for myself. That's where the winning mentality sort of kicked in. I did everything that I needed to do to build a better life for myself. That feels hard to me because there's so much emotional pain with the people that I love. This is just me executing a dream. It's an interesting one. I've heard my father cry once or twice, which is just a very odd thing knowing how their generation is built. It's just so far from, I'm quite an emotional person, really. I'm not a cry perspective, but I just wear my heart, my sleeve a little bit. But yeah, something very unusual and uncomfortable about seeing your father sob, not even cry. It's jarring. It is jarring. If that hadn't have happened, you wouldn't be having an amazing life that you've got now. In a weird way, there's silver lining around. Those negative experiences shaped the person that you are. And regardless of how hard they were, the first thing I did. The first thing I did as soon as I could was get them their house back. So, 25 years old, that was my first investment property at the time. They moved into it. They owned it. It's ours. They don't have to worry about that. You bought the house back for them. You also, and look, I don't want to get too much to do because I know you're a private person, that you've built sizeable property portfolio. You've also got a number of very large developments happening all across Sydney as well. This is only something that I found out probably in the last six months is you've just, you've got a lot of balls in the air, but you seem to be able to manage them without dropping them. And you've also got, give them a little plug, another business, a layer, a property which is a biotech and see if we're 20, something staff as well, which only started about a year ago. How do you manage that? How do you do flint a layer, the property development staff, your content, your present father, be a good dad, not go mentally insane, still have a good hair, hairline. Because most people, I'd love to have grey hair and your hairline still, that's fine. How do you manage all that? Because for most people, one of those would be daunting? Yep. And you've got, you seem to do it effortlessly and obviously, you know, I understand behind the scene is not like it's like, but from my perspective, it doesn't look difficult for you if I'm being, and that's a compliment, like it looks like you just taken your stride and absolutely love that. How, how do you do it? How is that possible, people? Thanks a lot going on there. That's a very nice compliment, making it look easy is something that I do. I always try and obsess about, like do great things but make it look easy. That's a function of somebody who's very, very capable. So that is a nice thing to say, man. How do I do it? Most of it's just on inspiration framework. I don't, I'm not that involved in the day-to-day actions of these things. So there's great teams behind the scenes doing most of the work, but it's creating a culture and of getting people to follow. That's on community, that's in our staff, that's our people, that's the network that we have. So how do I use me? The bigger skill is I need to be able to influence people, not do things. How do I influence people? That is, that mastery framework again. That skill is what's driving all of these sort of pursuits across, you know, most of them are in the property space. It's in the passion that I absolutely love. I don't do things in things that I don't know about. It's all property, just different components of property, but it's driven by that sort of framework that I have of just inspiring people and empowering people and trusting them to deliver and not obsessing over those more things. What do you want to do? Good question, that one. I don't know if I want to say it out loud actually. It's very clear to me, exactly what I want to do. I would like to build a fantastic business with you over the next few years, over the next five, 10 years, have a long that may be. I know that's clear. Beyond that, I could probably have my eyes on a few different pursuits, but that's in the longer term. And one dream, I think it's in our shareholder agreement. I'm pretty sure it's in the LA one for sure. It's the thing that I said to everyone is at some point I will take a year off because my number one priority and all of that is my gels and I want to teach them the way of the world and take them completely out from school and their environment and they need to spend a year with dad, with mom, anywhere in the world, and that year is for them, for their development, for their growth, to teach them exactly what life's like and show them how I kind of want them to be and what pursuits and opportunities they have out there in the world. Make sure you put your leave in. That's beautiful. So I think the whole purpose of building something substantial is to have freedom financially and time wise to be able to spend it on what is important and that is definitely not work. Like I love what we do. But the day family is far more important and also like experiences, they point working your house off, having a lot of money or being successful and then we're just not doing anything with that, we're not traveling and just being wed to your job. That for me is a success. Success is freedom and talking about culture, I think it's a good one to end with because, openly we've had a couple of people in the business who haven't shared the same beliefs and culture, I guess that are important to us and what that means for the overall culture, right? If you've got a bad egg or if you've got someone who doesn't gel well with the team, how do you deal with that and why is culture important for building something substantial? Oh, it's critical. Like we can't influence ourselves anymore. So we need people to go and do it for us. So that can get easily destroyed, easily destroyed with one or two poor operators, the douchebag policy that we have. The no douchebag policy is a good way to describe it. So how do we cultivate and power it? I think our leaders, definitely some of our leaders have been strategically and tactically chosen because I think they're the closest reflections of who I am and how I want our business to look. So that is one really quick hack of doing it. It's easier for our general manager and Nepal, Rishmi, it's very, very easy for her to behave and act a little bit like I do because she embodies the same values as I do and she really wants to be a little bit like that. So that's why she's in charge. She does that really well. And obviously she's got insane skill sets as well. So you've got to empower authors to deliver that culture message because they're dealing with everyone day to day. And then a lot of it's just, this one sounds a bit corny, but if you can be the leader of, if you can be the most inspirational in some capacity, for us we can be the biggest writers. I can produce that video content that I'm telling other people to do it. If I can do it, why can't they show people that it is possible? Be the brave one. Be the kind one. Be the one that apologizes when there's a risk of, you know, it being a damage to your ego, you know, take issues down the notch, do what you need to do to show authors that they have to behave like that. That's how you can drive that culture, particularly in the chairs that we sit in because so many people, so many of our staff watch us. They follow us. They see how we behave and they're mimicking it a little bit. So that's kind of my way of doing it. Been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Well, I'll say I want to be a bit. I appreciate you. I respect you. As I said at the start, you've been the biggest motivator and I had the most impact on my professional career. And I'm proud to call you my business partner, but thank you for being my first guest. Thanks, Christian.