What Ten Years of Work Taught Me About Property, People, and Building Something Real

Last year marked a decade of full-time professional work for me. And while the specifics have changed dramatically — from IT management to blockchain to institutional finance to running a property business — the principle that's made everything work has stayed exactly the same.

Help people without keeping score.

I know that sounds like a motivational poster you'd find in a dentist's waiting room. But I'm not saying it because it sounds nice. I'm saying it because it's the single most effective business strategy I've ever employed, and the results are measurable.

My wife and I have built a network of relationships — clients, former colleagues, industry contacts, even competitors — that consistently generates opportunities we could never have planned for. Every one of those relationships started with us helping someone without calculating what we'd get back 1.

The blockchain company (and why my boss still offers me a standing invitation)

My previous employer was a major blockchain company. I won't name them, but they're a household name in that space. I joined when my department had five people. I grew it to twenty-five. We hit $1.7 million USD in annual revenue. I was the guy they called when deals needed closing.

When I handed in my resignation, my boss — who's based in London — was genuinely confused. He'd just given me a 20% pay rise. From his perspective, everything was working. Why would I leave?

Because I'd already decided that property was where I needed to be. The decision wasn't about money — it was about building something of my own.

But here's the part most people wouldn't have done. After leaving, I kept helping. I referred two deals worth over a million USD each — one was a supplier relationship I'd cultivated, the other was a client I'd been nurturing for months. I didn't ask for a referral fee. I didn't negotiate a consulting arrangement. I just made two introductions because the connections made sense.

The result? My former boss gave me a standing offer: any time I want to visit London, flights and accommodation are on him. That's not charity. That's a man who knows the value of a relationship that doesn't come with strings attached 2.

More importantly, his network — and the introductions he's made for me since — have been worth far more than any referral fee I could have charged.

The protege who became a founder (and why that matters)

There's a young guy I'll call R. I hired him at a previous company. Sharp mind, restless energy, the kind of person who'd outgrow any job within eighteen months. I treated him like a younger brother — shared everything I knew about business development, strategy, client management, negotiation. Didn't hold anything back.

He eventually left before I did and started his own business. Some people would have felt used. I felt proud.

I kept helping him after he left. Introductions to investors. Connections in Southeast Asia. Advice on operational issues at odd hours. Last week we had a long phone call — his seed round just closed at nearly a million dollars USD, his main business is stabilising, and he's now looking at opportunities in Singapore and Malaysia.

When R succeeds — and he will — he won't forget who was in his corner when he had nothing. That's not hope talking. That's pattern recognition from a decade of watching how this dynamic plays out.

The same principle applies in our property business. We routinely help people who haven't used our services and may never use them. A guy who runs an Asian grocery chain needed renovation contacts — we connected him with our entire trade network. Didn't charge him a cent. His freezer now permanently stocks frozen wontons for us. A tech platform founder wanted to understand the Australian property market — we spent hours sharing our data and market views. He's now exploring how to integrate our methodology into his platform 3.

These relationships compound. Not in a spreadsheet. In a network.

How this philosophy shapes our property business

When I co-founded Optima with Yan, we deliberately built the business around relationship depth rather than transaction volume.

Most buyer's agents operate on a transactional model. Find a buyer, find a property, close the deal, collect the fee, move on. The relationship ends at settlement.

We do it differently. Our service covers buy, renovate, rent, manage, and refinance — the entire lifecycle of a property investment. We're not just helping clients buy a house. We're building their long-term wealth architecture. That means we're still in contact with clients years after their first purchase, helping them refinance, buy their second and third properties, or restructure their portfolios as their circumstances change 4.

Why do we do this? Partly because it's the right way to treat people. But also because it's a better business model. A client who buys one property and has a great experience becomes a client who buys four properties over five years. They refer their friends, their family, their colleagues. Our best months for new enquiries aren't driven by advertising — they're driven by word of mouth from existing clients.

We've now completed over 350 transactions. And I'd estimate that 40-50% of those came from referrals by existing clients. Not because we asked for referrals. Because we earned them.

Our clients include brokers, structural engineers, accountants, builders, property managers. We've turned them from customers into collaborators. When a client who's a mortgage broker refers us to their customers, and we refer our clients back to them for finance — that's not a commercial arrangement. That's a relationship ecosystem where everyone benefits.

The same goes for real estate agents. In Melbourne's southeast — Cranbourne, Hampton Park, Narre Warren — we know the top agents personally. Not their office number. Their children's names. Their favourite restaurants. When an off-market opportunity comes up, we hear about it first. Not because we pay the most. Because we settle the fastest, create the least hassle, and treat agents as long-term partners rather than adversaries 5.

Why most property professionals get this wrong

The property industry is dominated by short-term thinking. Agents want to close the sale. Brokers want to settle the loan. Developers want to move the stock. Everyone's optimising for the next transaction.

That transactional mindset is why the industry has a trust problem. Consumers assume — often correctly — that every recommendation comes with a hidden commission, every piece of advice is designed to push them toward a decision that benefits the professional more than the client.

I won't pretend we're saints. We're a business. We charge fees. We need to make money to keep the lights on and pay our team of over 40 people — from our front-end acquisition specialists like Steven and Edward, to our property management division where each PM manages a maximum of 50 properties, to our offshore operations handling compliance, leasing, and ongoing maintenance 6.

But we built the business on a principle that I've tested over a full decade: when you consistently help people without calculating the return, the returns eventually arrive in forms you couldn't have predicted.

The Singapore-based luxury hospitality operator I mentioned earlier? He came to us for commercial property. After hearing our analysis of the Australian market, he's now exploring opening his business in Melbourne. If that happens, it's not because of a pitch deck or a marketing campaign. It's because we shared genuine insight without a sales agenda, and he trusted our expertise enough to expand his business here.

That trust was built in a thirty-minute conversation where we gave away knowledge that other firms would have gated behind a consulting fee.

Some people will read this and think it's naive. That in business, you need to protect your knowledge, guard your relationships, and always negotiate for value received. I get that perspective. I just think it's wrong. The evidence from my own career — the blockchain deals after I left, R's success, the grocery chain owner's gratitude, the agent network that gives us first-look access to off-market deals — all of it traces back to moments where I chose to help without strings 7.

The compound interest of generosity (and what it means for your property journey)

If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: property investment is a people business disguised as a numbers business.

The numbers matter — of course they do. I wouldn't buy a property that doesn't meet our criteria: 80% land value ratio, sub-2% vacancy rate, positive cash flow post-renovation, minimum 5% gross yield. Those filters are non-negotiable 8.

But the best deals I've done — the Boronia property bought at $660,000 and valued at $890,000 four weeks later, the Hampton Park renovation that turned a derelict house into an $850-per-week rental machine, the Narre Warren acquisition where we outbid every other buyer's agent through pure relationship leverage — all of those happened because of people, not algorithms 9.

The Boronia deal came through an agent who trusted us enough to share an off-market opportunity that he could have sold through a public campaign for a higher fee. Why did he give it to us? Because over four years of working together, we'd never let him down. We settled on time, every time. We didn't renegotiate after building inspections unless the issue was genuinely material. We made his job easier.

That's the compound interest of generosity. You invest small acts of help, integrity, and genuine care over years. The returns show up in ways you never planned for.

Do nice things for people. Help without keeping score. Build relationships that outlast individual transactions. And when you do eventually need something — a deal, a referral, a favour — you won't have to ask. The people you've helped will already be thinking of you.

Ten years in, that's the best career advice I can give. It works in tech, it works in finance, and it absolutely works in property.