Scaling from 5 to 50 HMO Rooms — What Would I Do Differently?

In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of my own journey scaling from 5 to 50 HMO rooms. I’m rewinding the clock and sharing exactly what I’d do differently if I had to do it all over again.

You’ll hear the honest truth—what really worked, what I got completely wrong, and the lessons I learned the hard way. Most importantly, I’ll walk you through a practical, no-fluff playbook for growing your own HMO portfolio in a smarter, faster, and more sustainable way—without repeating my mistakes.

Topics covered in this episode:

• 02:51 - Key Success Factors in Growing HMO Portfolio
• 12:08 - Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned
• 25:26 - What I Would Do Differently

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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 (00:40.782)

Today's episode is all about scaling your HMO portfolio. I'm rewinding the clock to go back and take a look at what I would do differently going from 5 to 50 rooms. I'm going to break down what actually worked for me, what I got wrong, and then lay out the practical no fluff playbook for anybody who wants to grow their own HMO business only in a smarter, faster and more sustainable way without, of course, making the mistakes that I did. Please sit back, relax and enjoy today's episode of the HMO podcast.

Hey guys, it's Andy here. We're going 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 (02:22.704)

Okay, welcome back, gang. So today I am rewinding the clock of my business, specifically to that period where I grew my HMO portfolio from about 5 to 50 rooms. Now, if you're wondering how to build your business into something bigger, something more predictable, something more profitable, something worth all of the time and effort that you're putting into it now, then today's episode is definitely one for you. This isn't a hero story. I'm not going to walk you through the sort of shiny, glitzy, glamourous experience of building my portfolio.

I'm going to break down what actually worked for me, what didn't, and most importantly, what I would do differently if I had to start or even had the opportunity to start again or start from five rooms. Today's episode is going to be based on the real decisions I made, the real mistakes I made, no theory, just the experience, no fluff. And hopefully this helps you do what I was able to do only much more quickly at a much better cost with much more hair at the end of it. And I'm sure you can make the whole process much more enjoyable than I was able to as well. 

Basically, I think that my experience of doing this and the benefit of now hindsight and retrospect and reflection, hopefully this helps you to do it so much better and so much more easily. So what are we going to cover in today's episode? Well, I think what I'd like to do is start by sharing what I got right going back 20 years now. And you'll probably not be surprised to hear that that list is relatively short. There were a few things that I got right and I'm very grateful for having done. Then we're going to talk about, and I'm going to share what I got wrong and what I would do differently now. And I think that that's where the real value in today's episode really is. 

All the stuff I'm about to share, you can put into action in your business quickly at very low costs. And I'm confident you'll see a huge impact. A lot of this stuff is just taking a very different approach to probably what you're already doing. But I do see people make this mistake so often and it's really easy to correct it. And it's really easy to see results quite rapidly if you do it the right way.

So what did I get right? Why didn't I go back all that time ago? That 20 something year old Andy, what did I do right? Well, the first thing that I got right, and I am so incredibly grateful for this, is that I niched and I focused very early, right at the beginning. I picked a specific tenant type and a very specific location. And I knew that that combination would work really well for me, not just short term. In fact, I was thinking more so long term about that.

Andy Graham (04:46.105)

And I really kind of just buried my head into making that strategy work. And most importantly, I stuck to it. And as you can probably imagine over the years, so many things and opportunities and methods and strategies have come my way. And I could have turned my hand or at least tried to turn my hand to almost anything. And 95 % of what I have done has been the same. Same type of tenant, same location, doing things in the same way. It sounds a little bit boring.

But the great thing is if you focus, if you niche into a particular location and a particular type of tenant, you can build a really great foundation to build off, to grow off. And I'm so grateful that I did that. There's nothing worse in fact, than picking a location or a particular tenant type because you're chasing numbers and yields around the country and then finding one or two years in, that doesn't really work for you anymore. So you move the strategy somewhere else and then that's okay for a bit then it changes and then you go somewhere else. And I see this all the time. That's incredibly difficult business to build for so many reasons, not just logistically. And I think if you can just focus niche very early on, it will stand you in such good stead. 

Now, yes, there was a huge compromise for me with that. It wasn't an especially cheap location to buy. I mean, going back now, relative to today's prices, it was much cheaper, but it wasn't at the time. It wasn't like I was going to buy in the far northeast or northwest of the country where properties were 50, 60,000. I think the first property I ever bought was about 110,000, now worth about 300,000, but it wasn't cheap at the time. I went into the student market. I've talked about this so much on the show and in the community, but I felt like at least I had a good understanding of the student market, what it felt like to be a student in the HMO. And I used that experience in my business. So for me, that decision, that ability to focus and be really niche very early on was one of the most important things that I ever did. And I still buy in the same location serving the same tenant demographic. 

The other thing that I got right was that I really did know my numbers. I spent the time to make sure I really understood room by room profitability. I was able to track costs and predict my financial outcome. Now I couldn't tell you where any of those notes are.

Andy Graham (07:02.605)

It wasn't digitalized. I didn't have the deal stacker inside the HMO roadmap. I didn't even have an appraisal template, but I did have a calculator and I did have a pen and I did have a pad and I did do my numbers and I did make sure that the economics, the simple maths of my strategy worked. So when I was doing the first deal and the second deal, that is exactly what I did. So while it was a bit primitive, I still did what we should all be doing now. I spent the time to make sure that I really did know my numbers and that meant I have been able to avoid, and certainly at this early stage of my business, where it would have been really crucial and really damaging to make a huge mistake, I was able to avoid those big, expensive, costly mistakes. 

And while I didn't get absolutely everything right, because I didn't make any big whoppers of a mistake, I was able to progress slow and steadily, buying the next property and the next property and the next property gradually building my business up. That is so important. And I do see people overlooking the importance of understanding their numbers. And to understand the numbers, of course, you have to understand the location specifics. 

You can't understand your numbers if you don't actually know what the local rental demographic is and what the rental assumptions are and what the void rates that you should anticipate are and what it's going to cost to run a particular type of property. So all that stuff you do need to know. Of course, then you need to know your finance and your exit outcomes and mortgages and bill costs and things like that. I really spent time to thoroughly understand that stuff. And while I didn't get it all right, I managed to avoid making the big mistakes. The third thing that I got right that I'm really grateful for

Looking back at my younger self and I'm actually really proud of my younger self for this is that I was fully committed to this and I made a lot of temporary sacrifices. And when I say temporary, I mean, this was for five, six, seven years. I gave up weekends, gave up evenings, I gave up so much expendable cash that I could have used to do nice things with my time. I plowed it all back into my business. I started to build for the future. 

Now, I got increasingly more aware of the importance of that as I got a little bit older through my mid to late twenties, but even in my early twenties, I was buying in central England and I was living in the far southwest in Cornwall. That was a sort of a five hour one way trip. I would drive up on a Friday after work as a physio. I would drive back down on a Sunday afternoon, ready for work on a Monday. And I would be in the properties doing work myself over the weekend and I would take

Andy Graham (09:28.038)

my annual leave and I would go up to the properties and it would cost a lot in fuel and it was very difficult and I gave up so much to do this. But it is because of that, combined with my ability to really focus on what I was trying to achieve, that made it doable. That made it deliverable. And I do see a lot of people trying to outsource this sort of thing before really being prepared to roll up their own sleeves. It depends on what you want to achieve, the speed, the pace, the profitability, but I had nothing. I had to borrow the money I needed to get started about 30 grand to buy the first one plus a bit of money that I had started saving as a young physio. And I ploughed it all into my business. I had to do everything. I didn't have a choice. 

The next thing that I did, the fourth thing that I did that I'm really proud of was that I just rolled my sleeves up, like I said, and I just got stuck in and I just did it. I took action. I never hesitated. I didn't worry about what people would think. I was naive to it, probably in all honesty.

But I just got stuck in and I did it. And because I did, I learned. I learned on the job. I learned about stacking deals. I learned about negotiating with buyer, with sellers and with agents. I learned about getting HMO licenses. I learned about mortgages. I got, I kind of just jumped in head first and I figured it all out. I was careful. I tried to do it without taking any really big risks. I didn't just buy something that I didn't understand, but I got in the middle of my deals and I made it happen.

And because of that, I learned very, very quickly. And that I think was such a valuable experience. And the fifth and final thing that I got right, and this is pretty much the last thing that I got right, was that I didn't outsource everything too early. Because I stayed hands-on and built that proper experience, I was able to thoroughly understand my investments. I was able to develop my contact base. I was able to develop a bit of a local reputation. I was able to develop a reputation beyond just the area that I was buying deals and the people that I was working with on my properties, because I started to network with the larger investment community and I started to make friends and meet people and all of that stuff. 

Because I didn't outsource stuff, because I was prepared to actually get in and build my business, I started to find that there were lots of other benefits to this as well. So those are the five things that I think I got right. I focused, I niched, I knew my numbers, I was fully committed and I was prepared to accept quite a large amount of sacrifice temporarily, most of that was financial and time related. I learned by doing, I actually got stuck in and I didn’t outsource anything, I didn’t try to skip over things and find shortcuts to everything. I was prepared to in many cases do things the slower and slightly more painful way to make sure I really understood it so that I can then want to outsource it. 

Andy Graham (12:08.68)

So that's the, like I said, the short list of things that I got right. What did I get wrong? Okay. I've got seven things that I want to share with you here. And I would love to know as you listen to this today, if anything resonates here after today's episode, come over to the HMO  community and tell me, know, which bit resonated with you, you know, what was your experience like? But the first one was that I did a lot of this without planning or any process. I really did wing it. There were very few systems, possibly no systems. I really was reacting instead of running things properly. There are a few exceptions to that. I spent time to really understand the numbers.

But for example, I remember the first day I turned up at site after instructing a contractor and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. They could have been running circles around me from a cost perspective. Fortunately, they didn't. That first project more or less worked out okay. The house is still there, it's still standing. And I've done some periodic improvements on that very first project since then, but I've not had to do a full overhaul of it yet.

Yes, it doesn't look as good as stuff I've done in more recent years, but it worked. But I remember turning up and not having a clue. Andy, where's this? Andy, what tiles you want? Andy, how do you want this floor plan? Nothing. None of it had really been planned. Back of a fact packet sort of calculations that I'd gone through with the contractor. So I had a rough price, got them started and then figured it all out as I went. That is not the way to do it. I was very, very lucky, but I think the chances of getting that wrong now with that sort of approach would be incredibly high.

It's an incredibly expensive environment from a labor perspective and from a materials perspective. So you simply cannot afford to just turn up on a building site with a contractor and just wing it and expect everything that's going to go to plan. And actually this point is not just pertinent to the building and the refurbishment. Actually I winged the whole business idea really. I didn't have much of a plan when it came to adding value and refinancing. I didn't really.

Andy Graham (14:08.7)

much of a plan as to how I would buy the second and the third and the fourth and things like that. I did wing a lot of the stuff in business and I'm really big and I spend a lot of time with my mentees on planning and building processes. And the great thing about that is it gives you targets to work towards. It gives you actionable intentions. It gives you tangible things that you should actually go out and do. And then it's easier to measure the results of that tweak and refine to make sure that you continue to progress. And that is what business is all about. So

Don't wing it. Plan it and have processes. The second thing I got wrong was that I didn't standardize the spec or the layout of my HMOs early on. So if I look back at the first handful of properties I did, they're all very, very different. The furniture was all different. The bathroom specs was all different. The design and the paint spec was all different. The kitchens were all different. Everything is just different. Now I'm not saying that you have to do everything the same.

But what I learned very quickly was that it's actually quite difficult if you have in combination with no systems and processes, different paint colors and furniture and suppliers in every one of your projects. Because of course, when something goes wrong or you need something or you've got to do some repair or maintenance or replacement, it's very difficult to trawl through all of your records, find old invoices, which by the way, at that time were not on Xero or in the drive of any sort. 

They were in a folder somewhere, it was really, really difficult. And that did slow me down. It made it very difficult. And I think it did make it quite expensive as well. Now I work to standard specs, standard layouts, and I go back to the same suppliers for a lot of the same things. Yes, occasionally I do put in something quite bespoke and might do a special feature. That's okay. That still works. I'm minimizing the amount of variation in my HMOs, but that's really helpful from a scalability predictability from an efficiency perspective.

If you can start to standardize things like your specs on your layouts, that's a really useful thing to be able to do. Even better, if you actually standardize the type of property you buy, I remember one of my guests many years ago was a great example of this, lots of ex-local authority housing, which interestingly is what I started to buy. They came with more or less the same footprint every single time. So what you can do with them is essentially the same every single time. And that's great because it keeps all of your costs down. It makes your bill costs more predictable, everything. It just makes life so much easier. So you can't always control.

Andy Graham (16:30.088)

quite that much, but as a general rule, if you can standardise the spec and your layouts and the designs early on in your business, that will make your life much easier. It'll reduce your costs and you'll find that you can drive a lot more of efficiency through your business very, very quickly. Number three, the third thing that I got wrong was that I completely underestimated the power of brand and reputation. When I first got started, I was very much thinking about me and the project I was working on and then getting it right for those tenants. I wasn't thinking about the next deal. I wasn't thinking about my relationships with agents and how that could help bring on the next deal and the next deal and the next deal. I wasn't thinking about investors. I wasn't thinking about the next step. I was very much just thinking, looking at what was under my nose. And I missed a huge opportunity by not leveraging the power of brand and reputation early on. I did gradually build my reputation, but I think there was so much more that I could have done. I'll give you a really good example.

Recently, I finished with my business partner as a really fantastic project. And rather than just wait for a few people and press outlets locally to comment or come and approach us about it, we did a press release. It's a really great way of telling lots of people straight away about something great that you've done. And that really helps with things like awareness and brand and credibility and authority and experience. And it's the sort of thing that you can do locally. 

You can more nationally, maybe try and get yourself onto podcasts and in magazines and things like that. And I did eventually do that sort of thing, but early on I didn't. I completely underestimated the power of brand and reputation. Going back now, I would do that very, very differently, but every property was different and my ability to demonstrate what I was doing consistently and coherently was really difficult to do as well. And I think that I missed a huge opportunity with that. I think had I have built a brand earlier on, I would have achieved much more, much more quickly. 

The fourth thing that I got completely wrong was that I took far too long to systemize my business, to actually install operations into my business, what I was doing. So, you know how the maintenance and the lettings and the viewing should all operate and everything else. I was far too late and I did it manually for far too long. And because of that, I spent

Andy Graham (18:46.268)

way more time than I should have done doing the wrong things. I should have been far more focused on the things that were going to help me actually build my business and generate revenue and income and scale, rather than actually trying to do the nitty-gritty detail again and again again, without the ability to actually hand over things to people, recruit people into my team, get assistance, whatever it might be. I think it really wasn't until I had surpassed probably that 50 room mark that I really did start to do that. And that was a big mistake. I should have done it much earlier. I would have achieved much more. 

Yes, it would have cost me a little bit to do it. Yes, there is bit of time and frustration spent actually creating and documenting procedures. But as soon as you've done that, you can bring help and support in. It's actually intellectual property in your business. There is inherent value there. And then it's a level of efficiency that you can just drive through your business, making the next project and subsequent projects much easier to deliver.

The fifth thing that I got completely wrong was that I didn't really build a power team early enough either. I made all the mistakes in the book. I went to my hammer and I met a builder and that builder seemed okay. So I hired him. I didn't actually spend the time to really get quotes and costs from a number of different contractors. I didn't spend time building the relationship with people. So I did one project with a builder and never did it again. Not because anything had actually gone completely wrong, but I just didn't build that sort of a relationship. It wasn't a priority of mine. I didn't know what I was trying to achieve. There's so many examples of that, but the solicitors around you, your mortgage broker. 

In the early stages, if I go back and think of all the different people I worked with, there's so many different people. The person who did my first mortgage for me, the builders that I used, my solicitors, all completely different and were completely different every time for several years. Now I use the same people every single time. They know what I want. I know what they need.

And it drives again, another level of efficiency through the business, which is incredibly important. You have to be intentional about building a power team. So start doing that now. Number six, I avoided private finance for way too long. This is one of the single biggest mistakes that I made. I held off raising funds when I could have focused on that and scaled so much faster. Now the honest truth is that I didn't really know it was possible when I was in my early to mid twenties. I didn't know it was something people did.

Andy Graham (21:07.64)

In the context of raising a, borrowing a bit of money from a family member. Yes, I understood that I did that to get started. But the idea of borrowing money from professional investors, I did not know about and I didn't do it I didn't think about it. And I did nothing to help me with that effort. And had I have known that I could have started raising funds and scaled much more quickly with my business. Followed with the right deal and the right terms. I think I would have done exceptionally well. And when I started buying, this is the period sort of post financial crisis. 

A lot of people were looking for a good return on their money because they certainly weren't getting it in the banks. And a lot of people were afraid to get into the markets. So it probably would have been a really good time to develop some great contacts, some high net worth individual investors that could have loaned me money, probably at quite good rates. And that would have helped me to no end. But I didn't do it. I waited. I actually can't quite remember who the first investor I worked with was, but I think it was well after my first 50 rooms. 

Now, of course, it is a critical part of what I do every single day. The podcast quite simply is here in part because it helps me reach an audience of high net worth individuals and I can potentially lend money, borrow money from them. The podcast is one example, but there are many. The seventh thing that I really got wrong was that I got far too comfortable far too quickly. When I first got started, when I was doing the first few deals, I was really committed and I made a lot of temporary sacrifices. All that travel, spending all of my spare money, reinvesting it back in my business. But once I got a few deals underway, I got very comfortable because that income started to come in and that was additional to my job as a physio. And I was still living down in Cornwall at this time, surfing lots, enjoying life. And I did then have lots of spare cash. And because I was very comfortable, the drive to do more started to fade. And actually my progress started to wilt a little bit.

I don't know if you've heard the episode, if you heard me talking about this, there was a life changing event that happened to me somewhere sort of early on in my journey, sort of around 27-ish, 26, 27. And that completely changed my attitude towards everything. And I went away, needed a bit of time, got my health back to where it needed to be. And I doubled down. That life changing experience taught me the fragility of life. It reignited that drive to do more. And what I found was that I really enjoyed the

Andy Graham (23:32.892)

pursuit of doing more and being better. But I got really comfortable because I had this extra income coming in and I'd done a few projects and I was probably ahead of where most of my friends were at that time. I got a bit complacent, if I'm honest. I wasn't hungry enough when I just got started. I was really, really hungry. I kind of needed to make it work. And that was a big mistake. And now I continue to remind myself of that. I continue to try and in a way starve myself. Some of the great benefits of building a business, having the extra income and the assets and things like that. 

I have my business and I have my personal income and I keep them very separated and periodically I make some decisions about what I and we as a family want to do with that money, but I stay hungry and that hunger really, really drives me. And I continue to remind myself about where I want to be and what I'm going to need to do to achieve that. And that keeps me motivated. And I try and continuously stretch myself to those uncomfortable zones.

Projects that I just don't quite understand and I'm gonna to have to figure out. I'm gonna have to do something extra if I want to make that one happen. Something slightly bigger, something slightly more complicated, something that requires a bit more finance, something that might have a slightly different risk than I'm not familiar with. That's where I like to be, that uncomfortable zone. It's not that I'm taking unnecessarily large risks, but I like to continue pushing myself. And I think it's a really important part of the process of building businesses and real estate businesses. And if you're not careful, you can get very comfortable.

And you can sort of end up resting on the laurels of the first few properties that you've built. You've got a bit of income, you go part-time at work, all of us, getting nice and comfortable. Nothing's really pushing you. So that was a big mistake that I made. So with all that said and done, what would I do differently? Well, the first thing that I would do now without any shadow of an out is that I would learn more and I would do it faster. And to do that, I would get a mentor. 

I wish that I when I was in my early twenties could work with me now with all of the experience that I've got, I would have achieved 10 times the amount in a 10th of the time. That might sound like an exaggeration, but with the context and experience that a good mentor has, the results that you can get can absolutely rock it. And I think that that's incredibly important. And you have to be exceptionally careful when you're choosing to work with a mentor.

Andy Graham (25:50.458)

But for me, that is definitely something that I would do. I have talked about it on the podcast before, I've done a whole episode on why it was one of the best decisions that I ever made. But when I did get a mentor, my results did rock it. But it was towards the tail end of this sort of first 50 rooms that I made that decision. The second thing I would do is I would document everything. Refurbs, lettings, maintenance, the buying process, the challenges, the good stuff, the bad stuff. I would create templates, checklists, processes from day one.

Systems don't have to be perfect. They just have to exist. But I would start documenting everything. I would build infrastructure around my business and I would start to share the process of doing all of this. I would create a window to allow people to see inside what I'm doing. Now, why would I do that? Because the next thing that I would do, if I was going to do things differently, is I would build that brand. It's not just a logo. It's a recognisable look and feel and reputation.

It’s a person's relationship with you. And it might be a relationship through the window of something like Instagram now, but it's incredibly valuable and important. If we share and document everything that we do and we build a brand around that, it lets people in. It helps people understand who we are, why we do what we do, our value, our mission. It helps develop the authority and credibility that you need to raise finance. It demonstrates experience. So there's so much great stuff that can come from building that brand. And I would use those early projects to do it.

I started to document my journey again, probably towards the tail end of this and no surprises, but things started to rocket alongside having a mentor and everything started to change. I was able to find more opportunities. I was able to raise more private finance and I was able to achieve a lot more in business. And you guys know, if you follow me outside of the podcast and social media, you'll see how much work I still do to maintain my public reputation and let people into that window of what I do.

behind the scenes, the businesses that I build, the projects and the stuff that's going on because it's so important and it all has a purpose. I don't just do it because I enjoy spending time on social media. I do it because having a brand and being able to let people see in is incredibly important when it comes to raising finance and finding more opportunities. The fourth thing that I would do is I would actively start raising finance immediately from the get-go. Even if I didn't...

Andy Graham (28:12.86)

absolutely need it. I would always be on the hunt for it. I would be having as many conversations with as many people trying to raise as much as I possibly could. That experience is so important. It's very difficult to just turn this light on. When you want to raise finance, let's say you might need a hundred or 200,000 pounds for a project. If you've never had a conversation with an investor and you don't know anybody, that will be in all honesty, quite difficult to do. But if you've been having conversations for two years on and off with a few investors, never really needed it, but developed a good relationship, got a bit of a rapport with somebody. They've got a good understanding of what you do. You've had conversations about the potential. When you need it, all of that work and effort and time that you've put into nurturing those relationships will pay dividend. And you will be able to raise that hundred to 200,000 when you need it. But if you need it at short notice and you haven't done any work, you haven't built any sort of a foundation with investors.

You'll find it really, really difficult. So the best time to plant that seed is today. Even if it feels like you've got nothing to share or nothing of worth, that's not true. Document the process, share it. You've got other skills and attributes and experiences and there's only one of you. And that's the great thing. And remember when we're raising private finance, it's not just looking for somebody to give you a leg up. It's an opportunity for somebody else to earn a great return on their money in a field that they're probably quite interested in and they probably have a genuine interest in helping you as well. It's fantastic. It really is a win-win if you do it the right way. So I would start raising finance early and very intentionally. 

The fifth thing I would do is that I would set a very clear criteria for every single deal and I wouldn't compromise. Whilst that was really clear on the type of tenants and where I wanted to invest, what I wasn't super clear on is the type of deal that actually worked within that sort of template, if you like.

I spent a lot of time looking at deals that were quite simply out of my reach. They needed more capital and carried more risk than I was able to tolerate. And what that meant was it was really difficult for me to get into the deals. So I'd spend loads of time, get really excited, try and offers in and ultimately not be able to make them work. And I did that many, many times. And honestly, as you will probably know, if you're chasing deals yourself, that you can easily put four weeks into a deal to find out that it doesn't quite work at the end.

Andy Graham (30:32.378)

because you just don't have the ingredients that you need to make it work. It's not that it would have been a bad deal, but you're just not quite in the right position and it's not quite the right time. I'd be super specific. And I think had I've gone back, what I would have done is try to just replicate the same five bed, six bed model that had worked for me on a few occasions. And I would just do the same rinse and repeat. The sixth and final thing that I would go back and do differently, given the opportunity. And my advice to you would be that I would systemize from the outset. Basic systems be chaos every day of the week. If you can build as you're going to scale, that will help you to know. And the more rooms you've got, the less time you'll have to create systems later. 

So remember that it gets harder to implement systems the more you have. So whilst you don't necessarily need to have every system to do the first deal, you should start building the systems when you do that first deal and build onto it. It's something that you should continue to add to. And it should be a standard practice. It's best practice to do this in your business.

That means when you get to a point and you want to take that next step, you've got all of your processes documented. You can hire somebody into your team. Someone can take over a big chunk of what you're doing. All the processes to teach them there and hold them accountable exist. And that is the making of a really fantastic business. Whether it's an empire that you want to build, or whether it's just a lifestyle business, that is what you need. If you don't have them, it's practically impossible to bring someone into the business unless you're to get them to do it. Unless they can read your mind.

You are going to have to sit down and show them every single thing that needs to be done. If you just think about how much is involved, if you're self-managing with the process of securing a tenancy, getting a deposit, reconciling it at the bank, protecting it with a deposit agency, sending prescribed information, all of this stuff, like there's so many components to all this stuff. And if you can do it early on, as you go, it will save you so much heartache later on, and it will allow you to move forwards much more quickly. 

So, there we go. Let me just recap on the things that I would do differently. The first thing I would do is I would learn more much faster and I would get a mentor to help me do it. And I would join the HMO roadmap, by the way. I would document everything. I would build a brand. would start raising finance early. I would set a clear criteria for every single deal and try and work very much within that framework. I would systemize from the outset. So there we go. I know that there's a lot there, but that is the stuff that worked for me. It's the stuff that didn't do work for me. And it's the stuff that I would do.

Andy Graham (32:58.384)

differently if I wanted to go from 5 to 50 again, but this time without the guesswork. And I think I would be able to do it much more quickly and much more profitably if that's a word. 

But the reality is you won't get everything right. No one does. You don't need to, but hopefully this episode helps you just avoid one or two really painful mistakes. And hopefully it gives you a clearer path to your next deal and the one after that. And if you can continue to do that, that is what this game is all about time in the market beats anything. And the most important objective is to get from one deal to the next deal safely and sensibly. And if it takes a little bit longer, don't worry too much. The most important thing is you do it the right way. You do it safely. You don't put anything at too great a risk. And if you can look with a long enough time horizon, you don't have to do a huge amount over a 10 year period to completely change, not just your life, but the life of your children in the next generation. So you should be really encouraged by that. And I wish that I had had all of this insight when I was just getting started, because I would have achieved more and I would have done it in a very different way. 

Let me know where you guys are up to though. Drop me a DM on Instagram, come on over to the community and tell me where you're at on the journey. How's it going? What's going well? What's not going so well? Has anything in today's episode helped you? Do you have any questions? Do you need some guidance and advice and support? Come and ask me and come and ask one of or any number of our 10,000 community members over in the HMO community. That's our free group on Facebook. 

So if you haven't already joined, do come and check it out. We know some of you guys listening to the podcast haven't joined because we see the stats. We know there are more listeners than there are community members. So come and check it out. Of course, if you are serious about leveling things up, I talked briefly about getting a mentor today, but the first step is to just develop your baseline knowledge. Do some structured learning. You can only get so far guys with podcasts and YouTube videos, you need structured learning and the HMO roadmap has all of it. So head to thehmoroadmap.co.uk. 

If you want to build this business, if you're serious about what's involved and the risks and the amount of capital involved, just go and check out thehmoroadmap.co.uk. It is a fraction of the cost we're talking about to buy and invest in property and the value you will get from it is sensational. So go and check it out. Let me know what you think and come join the next drop in Q&A.

Andy Graham (35:18.524)

session, you can actually come sit with me every couple of weeks and ask your questions as a member of the HMO roadmap. But that is it for today's episode guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that today's episode has helped you. I hope it's encouraged you. I hope it's motivated you. I hope in some ways it's reassured you and I hope it has helped to streamline your business and I hope it helps you get better results in less time. That's it guys. Thank you again for tuning in 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.