Scott O’Neill, Founder & CEO, Rethink Group | The CEO Magazine

Scott O’Neill has never been particularly interested in following the crowd. When he began investing in 2010, Australia’s property playbook was well established – buy residential, accept the negative gearing and then bank on capital growth eventually making the numbers work.

O’Neill, Founder and CEO of Rethink Group, had already seen the downside of that strategy up close.

“I saw my father lose a lot of money through negatively geared properties in Sydney,” he tells The CEO Magazine. “We had assets as a family, but then the cash flow was so bad it was quite stifling at times.”

So the former civil engineer went the other way. O’Neill invested for cash flow, moved into commercial property and then in 2015, founded Rethink Investing in a market where commercial buyers’ agencies barely existed.

“When I started 10 years ago, there were no commercial buyers’ agent companies. There were no books in Australia on commercial property. There were no podcasts on it,” he explains.

A decade later, his contrarian bet has become a sizable business. Rethink Investing, the foundational commercial property buyers’ agency under the Rethink Group umbrella, is now Australia and New Zealand’s largest commercial buyers’ agency, with roughly US$5 billion in real estate transactions. In 2025 alone, it facilitated around US$1 billion in commercial deals.

But ask O’Neill what he is building today and the answer is no longer simply a property company. It’s a platform designed to give private investors access to opportunities traditionally reserved for institutions.

“I like to think we democratize commercial investments for the masses,” he says.

Building beyond property

Under Rethink Group, that platform now extends across buyers’ agency, finance, legal services, insurance, renewables, wealth advisory and funds management. O’Neill says the expansion has been driven less by a desire to accumulate businesses and more about simply being there for clients.

“Each business exists because our clients needed it at some point in their journey,” he points out. “The vision is not to create the biggest property company in Australia, but to be the most complete and comprehensive one that people can partner with.”

While the Group may be heavily focused on commercial property today, O’Neill doesn’t want it tied permanently to any single asset class.

“If in 10 years’ time, commercial has gone up too much in value and the yields aren’t as good, then we’re going to be in a different asset class,” he says. “That’s what any good investor does. You don’t just blindly stick to one lane forever.”

For now, however, O’Neill sees considerable room left in commercial – particularly in the US$1.43 million to US$14.2 million segment.

“That price point is where we dominate,” he says. “There’s really no competition.”

It’s a sweet spot between individual investors and major institutions – and one Rethink Group knows well.

“This is what we do every day of the week,” O’Neill points out. “Clients come to us because we find the deal, do the due diligence and then link them up with the correct lawyers and property managers.”

Protecting the advantage

It’s an edge O’Neill is careful not to dilute. The company now accounts for around 61 percent of Australia’s commercial buyers’ agent market. Yet he is wary of chasing more simply because the opportunity exists.

“We’re not just chasing volume, we’re chasing the right assets with the right yields,” he says.

Compromising on quality could generate more deals and revenue in the short-term, he acknowledges, but it could also undermine the reputation Rethink Group has spent a decade building.

“If anything, we’ve held ourselves back just to make sure the quality is there,” he adds.

This long-term view also shapes how he thinks about his own role. Having achieved financial freedom at 28, O’Neill says his personal scorecard has changed.

“Helping clients is the only metric that I generally care about these days,” he says. “We want to help them retire as soon as possible from income rather than just selling assets.”

Financial security also gives the Group room to make decisions that might not produce an immediate payoff, such as retaining staff during weaker market conditions and investing heavily in systems and capability.

“When you’re trying to build wealth, you have to make decisions to line your pockets,” he explains. “But now, the coffers are deep enough not to worry about that anymore – and it’s been like that for many years – so it makes you operate differently in business.

“Winning from a business point of view now is just maintaining our position in the market. If we can keep that dominant spot, then that’s winning.”

A lasting legacy

These days, O’Neill’s definition of winning also means building something that can outlast him.

“Personal branding is important to a degree, but I want to build something that’s better and bigger than that,” he says. “The brand itself is the end goal.”

Rethink Group now employs around 150 people, with O’Neill pointing to strong retention as evidence of the culture it has built. The next stage is about making every part of the company less dependent on its Founder.

“The goal is that each key function in this business has someone better at it than I am,” he says. “Right now, we have the best of the best in each department with the best systems behind it.

“If I just vanish one day, it won’t matter – the company will keep running perfectly.”

Getting there may ultimately be a better measure of what he has built. Not simply a billion-dollar business with a dominant share of the market, but a company capable of continuing to rethink investing long after its Founder has stepped away.