What's Holding You Back From Building The HMO Business You Want? #REWIND

What’s holding you back from building the HMO business you want, and more importantly, what are you doing about it?

In this episode, I’m revisiting one of my most downloaded and valuable episodes, packed with insights to help you overcome key obstacles in building your property business.

I’ll share seven ideas that can help clear some of the biggest, yet easiest-to-overcome challenges. It’s hard to see the full picture when you're in the thick of it, but get these right, and 2025 could be the year you finally build the HMO business you’ve always dreamed of.

Topics covered in this episode:

• 01:10 - Identifying Obstacles in Property Business
• 03:19 - Seven Key Ideas to Overcome Challenges
• 04:36 - Waiting for the Right Time
• 06:57 - Mindset and Fear of Failure
• 08:51 - Spreading Yourself Too Thin
• 09:49 - Building Confidence in Your Abilities
• 10:45 - Embracing Risks in Property Investment
• 12:14 - Taking Action Towards Your Goals
• 13:40 - Addressing Knowledge Gaps

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Transcript

Andy Graham (00:02.67)

Hey, I'm Andy and you're listening to the HMO Podcast. Over 10 years ago, I set myself the challenge of building my own property portfolio. And what began as a short-term investment plan soon became a long-term commitment to change the way young people live together. I've now built several successful businesses. I've raised millions of pounds of investment and I've managed thousands of tenants. Join me and some very special guests to discover the tips, tricks and hacks, the ups and the downs, the best practice and everything else you need to know to start, scale and systemise your very own HMO portfolio now.

Andy Graham (00:40.674)

What's holding you back from building the HMO business that you really want? And perhaps even more importantly, what are you doing about it? In today's episode, I want to rewind onto an episode that I recorded a couple of years ago that I think has been one of the most important, one of the most valuable, and certainly it is one of the most downloaded episodes to date. 

Today, I want to share seven ideas to help you overcome what I think are perhaps some of the biggest obstacles, but actually some of the easiest to clear, some of the easiest to overcome. When you're building a property business, it's quite difficult to see the wood for the trees. It's easy in retrospect to see the problems, to see the challenges and to see the solutions that you needed to overcome them. But actually when you're in the middle of it, when you're in the mix, it's January when we're starting to plan and we're excited about growing. It's very difficult to see what the biggest challenges really are. And sometimes they're not quite as obvious as we think they would be. 

But the good news is in today's episode and this rewind back to 2022, I'm going to share seven ideas to help you overcome these huge challenges, these huge obstacles. And if you get these right, and it's pretty easy to get this right, you could do some incredible things this year. 2025 really could be the year you go and absolutely smash it. It could be the year that you do really go out and build the HMO property business that you really want. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy today's episode of the HMO podcast.

Andy Graham (02:08.526)

Hey guys, it's Andy here. We're going to be getting back to the podcast in just a moment, but before we do, I want to tell you very quickly about the HMO roadmap. Now, if you're serious about replacing your income, or perhaps you've already got a HMO portfolio that you want to scale up, then the HMO roadmap really is your one-stop shop. 

Inside the roadmap, you'll find a full 60 lesson course delivered by me, teaching you how to find more deals, how to fund more deals and raise private finance, how to refurbish great properties, how to fill them with great tenants that stay for longer and how to manage your properties and tenants for the future. 

We've also got guest workshops added every single month, we've got new videos added every single week about all sorts of topics, we've got downloadable resources, cheat sheets and swipe files to help you, we've got case studies from guests and community members who are doing incredible projects that you can learn from, and we've also built an application just for you, that allows you to appraise and evaluate your deals, stack them side by side and track the key metrics that are most important to you. To find out more, head to thehmoroadmap.co.uk now and come and join our incredible community of HMO property investors.

Andy Graham (03:19.026)

Welcome back guys. So today, I want to talk to you about what might be holding you back from building the property business that you really want and then I want to talk about some solutions to help you do what you want and do it more quickly. Now if I take myself back in time to when I was just getting started, it was slow. The progress was unquestionably slow. Now in part, that was because I really know what I was actually trying to do. That itself was a problem, but I wasn't aware of so many things that I'm now aware of. 

So 10, 12, 15 years on, there's a lot that I've learned about myself and about people and about business that I can see and I can see was holding me back. Now I have to keep this stuff in check. Isn't necessarily something that I'm immune to, but it's something I'm very much aware of. And I think being aware of it and getting better at dealing with it has unquestionably helped me do more in my business, it's helped me achieve more and it's certainly helped me do it a lot more quickly. 

So today I want to share seven ideas with you, seven things that I think could be holding you back if you're being honest with yourself, saying you haven't done enough of, you haven't achieved enough of, you haven't achieved your goals quickly enough. I think that this is going to help. So let's just get stuck straight into this. 

Number one, the first thing that I want to talk to you about today, in fact, the first thing that I want to ask you today is, are you waiting for the right time? Because if you are, this could be something that's holding you back, a good example here is are you waiting for property prices to crash? This crash has been coming for years, hasn't it? A clock is right and what twice a day? This is the same in property. This idea that the timing has to be just right for us to take that next step is for a lot of us holding us back. It's going to stop us achieving what we want and it's going to really slow us down. 

Does it even matter? It probably doesn't. Yes, it'd be great to get a property slightly more cheap than we might have at another time in the year or the year previous, but actually if you zoom out, it doesn't really matter. A great book, Tony Robbins book called Unshakeable. It's about investing and good investing sense and logic. And one of the things he talks about and shares examples of is just the importance of buying and sort of riding through the rough times and just holding out. And I see very much that property is exactly the same as that. If you're waiting for things to be just right, you're almost definitely

Andy Graham (05:30.988)

missing out on opportunities. You're almost definitely making your life more difficult. When's the best time to plant a seed? If you want to grow a tree, it's today, obviously. And it doesn't necessarily have to be property prices that you're waiting for. Are you waiting for interest rates to come back down or get back to a better place? Are you waiting on better news? Are you waiting to free up more time in your own life? When property is probably the solution to freeing up more time. These are very real, but very important considerations. And I want you to think about them. I want you to be honest with yourself. Are you waiting for the right time to build your property business? 

The second thing I want to ask you is, is it your mindset? Are you afraid of failure? Is that holding you back? Is that stopping you from taking that next step? Do you see problems, perhaps as opposed to possibilities? A lot of people, myself included, have pre-programmed to maybe see the issues before the good things, see the downside before the upside. Do you compare yourself to others? It's the thief of joy, isn't it? Comparison, particularly in today's world with social media and we see so many people doing seemingly great things at exponential speeds, but we're not doing the same. Is it a mindset problem? There's nothing wrong with you if perhaps there is an element of this here, but I want you to try and change it. I want you to try and acknowledge it. And I want you to think about whether thinking differently could help you change your perception and ultimately change your results on what you could do. I'm a big believer in that most of us can do whatever we set out to achieve.

Within the realms of reality, I'm never going to be an Olympic sprinter. I'm genetically just not pre-programmed the right way. I'm never going to have a tan. I am genetically limited in that sense. So let's be realistic, but do I have the same opportunities at hand to build a great property business as some of the other people out there who've built great property businesses? Yeah, I do. I'm a white middle-aged male in the UK. In fact, in many ways I'm blessed. I've got far greater opportunities than many people. 

So sometimes we have to just remind ourselves of what we have. We have to change our mindset. We have to approach what we're doing in a very different way. But if you're afraid of failure, if you're seeing the problems as opposed to the opportunities, and if you're comparing yourself to others, I want you to stop it. I want you to change your mindset. I want you to flip it on its head. I want you to think much more positively, much more constructively about what it is that you want to do in property. Number three, I want you to be honest about this one. Are you spreading yourself too thin? I see this so often.

Andy Graham (07:53.322)

Often with my mentees, you want to achieve great things and they're doing some good stuff, but finding it difficult to get results in other areas and finding it difficult to consistently deliver on their goals and their objectives and deliver results. Are you spread too thin? So many of us are, often myself included. This is one thing that I really have to keep in check, but I've learned over the years that if I do keep it in check, if I just focus on the priorities, I get to where I want to get much more quickly and the best examples and if you go back and listen to some of the great examples on the case studies and people building portfolios on the show, there is a consistent theme that they apply themselves to the task at hand. They aren't spread too thin. They're not doing HMOs and SA and commercials to resi and rent to rent all at the same time. 

As a good example, pick one strategy and stick to it and do it until you're making some money and you're good at it and you can eliminate some of the problems that you've got and you can automate some of the tasks that you've got to do and you can simplify and delegate part of what's involved.

Then you can move on to the next thing. Then maybe you can look at something like essays or commercial to residential or raising private finance or whatever it might be. But are you spread too thin? Nine out of 10 people trying to build property businesses are, and they don't realise that this is one of the reasons they're not getting results. 

Number four, do you lack confidence in your own ability? This is something that when I was a bit younger, I certainly did. I saw other people doing great things and I didn't feel like I had some of skills that they have. I certainly didn't have the confidence to sit down with investors. I didn't have the confidence to sit down and pull builders up on things that weren't good enough, even though I knew in my heart that it wasn't good enough and that that wasn't what I was paying for. And they are just two small examples. 

Do you lack confidence in your own ability? It's okay. The truth is consistency and in fact persistence and just being doggedly persistent are far more important. And I've built and developed confidence over the years. I've never been particularly great at faking that, but I've certainly built it and developed it over the years as I've got more experience and I I just realised that I often can do what I set out to achieve, but I think I've won because I've been consistent and I've won because I've been persistent. Irrespective of my confidence, I've dealt with those two elements and I've managed to get some great results. So try and identify whether or not confidence is something that you're lacking and don't worry about it. Accept it. It is what it is over time that will come and if you

Andy Graham (10:17.954)

Follow some of the other advice I'm going to share with you in today's episode. You will build that more quickly, but continue to focus on being consistent and persistent in your pursuit of building this property business. 

Number five, are you afraid of risks? This is an important one. And I'm to be really honest with you. I talked about this in my presentation at the HMO awards. One of the things over the years that I've building property businesses and more recently, the few years doing the podcast and having the great pleasure of being able to interview some fantastic people who've achieved some amazing stuff and meet lots of incredible people with really successful businesses. I've realised that they are very comfortable when it comes to taking risk. They're not stupid. They take very calculated and very logical risks, but they do take them. And in fact, they embrace those risks. That's what excites them. That's what switches them on. That in a weird way is kind of what turns them on. And actually over time that has become me as well. I was initially perhaps quite reserved when it came to risk. I didn't want to take too much risk on. 

And now I've got a bit more comfortable and I've started to realise that so long as I apply good logic to it and have the downsides covered and plan Bs and plan Cs, it's okay. You've got to get comfortable with taking risks in property. It's okay. You don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to be able to guarantee anybody, anything, including yourself. But if you want to achieve some great things, and particularly if you want to do this quickly in an industry like ours that requires a lot of capital and there's a lot of competition, you do need to be able to take some risks. And look, what is the alternative here? You don't take any risks. That's probably the biggest risk of all, isn't it? Not actually stepping out of your comfort zone and giving it a go. I certainly don't want to be that person when I'm older saying that I didn't take enough risks. I didn't push myself far enough. 

Number six, do you take the action that you need? Are you honest about this? Do your behaviours actually align with what you say you want to do? You say you want to build a property business. You say you want to raise finance. You say you want to find more deals. Do you actually go out and do the work? Do you actually go to network events? Do you actually get online and build relationships with people? Do you give back to the community before you ask to take from it? Do you call the agents? Do you put the viewings in? Do you have a direct to vendor mail campaign? Even though you've been telling yourself for months and months and months, this is what you need to do. Have you actually got up, built your list, prepared some marketing and sent it and sent it consistently?

Andy Graham (12:41.942)

A lot of people I know right now will be sitting and listening to this, looking at themselves thinking, no, you know what, I haven't taken the action. I've been telling myself I'm going to do this and I haven't actually done it. This is so important. And actually, of all the things I'm going to talk to you about in today's episode, this is unquestionably the biggest you have to take the action. You have to actually do it. And this is if you look at anyone who's achieving great things, probably the one thing that will stand out above all else. They are at least out there and they are doing what they want to do.

And number seven, the seventh piece of advice or the seventh thing that I want to ask you is, is the lack of knowledge potentially affecting your ability to implement your strategy? Are the things that you're unsure of, do you question the decisions? Do you know how to stack a deal up? Is that holding you back? Do you know how to cost a refurbishment up or do you need a bit of help and support to do that? These things really damage your confidence and in turn, they can limit your ability to actually get results. 

And I understand that, but we're in an industry where there are lots of moving parts, there's lots of legislation, there's a lot to think about, there's a lot of competition, we've got to make sure that our products are right, we've got to make sure that we're managing our properties and our tenants right, you know, there's a lot to think about. And sometimes that can be overwhelming, and sometimes it can just be quite complicated. Just the sort of basic economics of HMOs and Article Four Directions and HMO licensing can get people really confused, and I totally get it. It is very, very confusing. 

But don't let that lack of knowledge be a reason why you're not achieving what you want to achieve. It's all out there. There's a lot of free information out there. There's a lot of paid information out there. This podcast is a great source. The HMO Roadmap is a great source. Still very cheap. There's a lot of stuff on YouTube. There's other programs. There's mentorship. There's events and courses. You could go and work for somebody as an apprentice or a trainee. Just tag yourself to an investor who's doing great things. There are lots and lots of solutions. And in fact, no real excuse not to have the knowledge because it is all out there. It does just take a bit of time to figure it out. And that needs a commitment. You've got to maybe sacrifice the beers at the weekend with the guys to sit down and actually learn about this stuff. And I say that having done this myself, having sacrificed huge amounts and really devoting a lot of my time and attention to learning how this industry works so that I can get better results. So there we are.

Andy Graham (15:06.498)

Seven things, seven questions that I want you to ask yourself. Are you waiting for the right time? Number two, is it your mindset? Do you see problems as opposed to possibilities? Number three, are you spreading yourself too thin? Is that perhaps why you're not getting results? Number four, do you lack confidence in your own ability? Number five, are you afraid of the risks? Property investment is fraught with risk. There's no doubt about it, but there are solutions to mitigate a lot of the risks. Number six, are you taking the action? Are you actually doing what you say you want to do. Number seven, do you have the knowledge or do you lack the knowledge that you need to go and do this effectively? 

I want you to be really honest. I want you to take today's episode away and I want you to reflect on it and I want you to ask yourself those questions and be honest with yourself and then I want you to do something about it. Now I've got some action steps, some things that I think will help you if there's anything in here that you've identified with. If there's anything in today's episode that you think, yeah, you know what, I'm probably right. I see that in myself. I do that myself. The first thing I want you to do is go and do it now. No matter how hard it seems, whatever you do, I want you to go and do this now. Don't wait. Don't wait for the perfect time. Just get started. You have to get started with the right thing. If that view is going and getting educated and learning more, go and do that. If the right thing for you is actually dropping the idea of SA and just focusing on the HMOs or vice versa, just go and do that. If the right thing for you is to go and book five, six viewings every week until you find the right property and you get an offer accepted go and do that but whatever you do just please please please go and do it. 

Number two, I want you if you're struggling with mindset or you identified with any of those points I raised around mindset I want you to adopt a mindset of abundance and positivity. I am not one for airy fairy fluffy ideas at all. You know me I'm really black and white I'm quite binary in many ways, it's a bit boring I know but one thing that I think or I would hope anybody would say about me at my funeral is that I'm eternally positive and I do have an attitude of abundance. I take everything as it comes, but I'm always open to the possibilities. And I think that that's really, really important. I don't let the possibilities of things going wrong affect me too much. Yes, things need be considered. Yes, I need to think about how I'm actually going to overcome any challenges, but I'm always positive about the fact that I could probably figure it out with the help of great people around me. I could probably

Andy Graham (17:34.732)

figure it out with the skills and experiences I've developed over the years, I can probably figure it out. And I want you to adopt that same mindset too, because it is so powerful and so useful and so invaluable when it comes to building a property business. Number three, I want you to be really strategic. I want you to narrow down your vision and I want you to keep it really simple. If you are spread too thin, if that's you, if you're doing this and that and chasing these shiny pennies, that's okay. I get it. You're human, but I want you to be strategic. I really want you to go away.

And I want you to think about what it is that you want to achieve long term. What do you want? How do you want your life to look? Where do you want to be able to spend your time? And I want you to focus in on the strategy that is going to help you deliver that. And then I want you to go and start taking the action to actually do it. The fourth thing I want you to do if confidence or lack of confidence might be a thing is go and connect with other people. Go and immerse yourself in the community because I guarantee you'll find confidence from the amazing people out there and in the HMO community. 

People who've probably been through what you're experiencing. People who've already achieved great things. People who've got similar problems and have found solutions to deal with them. People who've got really specialist skills in areas that you just don't have skills and that's okay. You don't need to be a mortgage broker. You don't need to be an architect. You don't need to be a planning consultant.

You can find all these skills and you can get the confidence from other people, but you've just got to go out there and you've got to find the right people, go and get involved in the community. It'll really help with your confidence. If you're afraid of risks, I want you to really think about leaning into them. I want you to get uncomfortable with that degree of uncertainty. I want you to embrace the challenges that come with building a property business. Yeah, it might not work. Yes, you might leave your job and you might try and build a property business and it might fall flat on its face, but who cares? 

At the end of the day, could you go back and get a job? The likelihood is yes you probably could. Could you save up for three, six months, get yourself a bit of a runway to really give this a good go? Yes you probably could if you made a few sacrifices. I really really really want you to lean into these risks and uncertainties, whatever they might be, whether it's a bit of planning, whether it's starting a new partnership, maybe you've not done that before, maybe it is just leaving your job to get into property. I want you to start getting comfortable with the idea of taking risks because

Andy Graham (19:50.67)

you want to achieve great things, if you want to build a successful property business, you are going to have to take some calculated logical risks. There is a caveat though, and it is that you have to remain calculated and you have to remain logical. Don't do it with a blindfold on. Number six, if you're one of those people who procrastinate, you think about it, you've been on all the courses, you've done all the learning, but you don't take the action. I want you to stop and I want you to just go and do it. It could not be any simpler. Go and actually implement what you've learned what you've been told what you know will bring the results. I'm not gonna say any more on that It's that simple. 

Finally if you haven't got the knowledge if this is the piece that you're struggling with go and get yourself some education. The community is great place to start and it's free to join. the HMO roadmap. It's 48 pound a month There are other programs out there as well join a mastermind get a mentor I've done episodes and I've been really candid and sharing my experience about how much those experiences have been able to help me. How quickly they've helped me level up to the next stage in my property business, really invaluable experiences. And I still invest a huge amount of my time and money into educating myself, into making sure I'm sat in the room with the right people, whatever it might be. I think it's incredibly important that we are getting educated and it's a continuous process. But if this is something right now that's limiting you and stopping you making that next step, whatever that step is, go and get the education you need, go and get the support, go and get the guidance that you need. It's there, it's all out there. So there are no excuses. 

Well, that's it for today's episode. I'm a bit pumped after it, if I'm honest. I feel like giving you a fist bump. I know that building a property business is really challenging and I know that episodes like this can oversimplify it. And I know that there's a lot of detail in there, but honestly, trust me, zoom out from it and try and figure out why it is you're struggling. It's unlikely to be all of this, but there will almost certainly be one or two things that you can say, yeah, that is me.

And they are actually pretty easy to solve and you'll be surprised as to how quickly you can get results if you just deal with them. If you tackle these head on and actually do something about it, you could really change the outcome. You could really reshape whatever your business looks like. You've got 12 months to do some incredible things. I've seen other people in our industry do amazing things in 12 months. That could be you. Make sure that you are not what is limiting you. Make sure you are not what is getting in your own way.

Andy Graham (22:12.342)

That's it for today's episode guys. Thank you for tuning in. Now don't forget that if you want to level things up, make sure you head over to theHMOroadmap.co.uk. We've got one of our biggest sales ever on at the moment and you can take advantage of everything that we have got for offer inside the HMO roadmap, 20% off. You'll never get an offer like this again. Get your hands on over 70 case studies from the community. Get your hands on all of my downloadable resource and templates that not only just save you hours and hours and hours of time, but will save you literally thousands of pounds having to create them yourself. 

Investor decks, loan agreement templates, rent to rent, agreements, welcome packs. We've got everything you could possibly need. We've got the deal stacker. So if you're looking at deals, you want to do the maths, you want to appraise your deals, I've got it all inside the HMO roadmap waiting for you. Stack your deals, compare them side by side, track the key metrics, the most important pieces of data to you. You've also got expert masterclasses from everybody, including Ellie, our mortgage broker, Andrew and Mary, our architects, planning consultants, interior designers, and a whole lot more. 60 lessons from me teaching you step by step how to start, scale and systemise through the process of finding more deals, funding your deals, raising private finance, fixing and refurbishing, finding and filling them with great tenants and then getting into the flow of good property management to actually monetise your HMO investments. 

Trust me. For less than the price of a cup of coffee every single day, this could be the single most important decision that you make in 2025 to help you on the journey of building a really incredible and really successful HMO property business. So go and grab that offer before it disappears. Just head to theHMO roadmap.co.uk. I promise you will not regret it. That's it, guys. Thank you once again. And don't forget that I'll be right back here in the very same place next week. So please join me then for another installment of the HMO podcast.