For many people, going full-time in their property business is a big part of their long-term plan, but is it right for everyone? We see other successful people in the industry making the jump, and naturally, many of us want to as well!
I’ve been working full-time in my property business for the last eight years, so I want to rewind and share my experience with you – the good and the bad. I’ll cover how I did it, and hopefully, this will help you understand how to make this decision for yourself.
If you’re thinking about whether you should be going full-time in your property business, read my hands-on experience and advice below or listen to the full episode on The HMO Podcast.
How Can Going Full Time Help Your Business?
The experience of building my property business and going full-time has definitely been a roller coaster. Going full-time isn’t the only key to unlocking success in your business. There’s still so much more involved.
I think the choice of going full-time and in part, the sacrifice that people are prepared to make is often one of the predetermining factors that help people get to where they want to with their business and personal objectives.
I’m sure there are countless examples of people out there who went full-time with their business, didn’t do particularly well, and are now no longer full-time. They may have had to revert to something else, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Failures are a part of building any business.
But generally speaking, when I step back and look at the most successful examples of property businesses that I’ve seen, they’ve been built by people who have gone full-time with it.
Why Are You Building a Property Business?
It’s important to ask yourself why are you building a property business? Is it because you have a specific financial target and need to replace a certain amount of income? Or is it because you enjoy property and want to spend time doing what you want to do on your own terms? Or do you want flexibility and freedom of time and choice?
Once you answer that, you’ll then need to honestly ask yourself what you need to do to fulfill that personal objective. For me, I was driven by freedom of time and choice. I wanted to make my own decisions and didn’t want to work a nine to five anymore or answer to anyone else.
Because of that, jumping out at an earlier stage was a big part of fulfilling my personal goals. Initially, it was just about getting my sleeves rolled up and getting stuck into my business because that itself was what I wanted to do!
If you have a specific financial target, then maybe going full-time has to wait, or maybe not. If it’s about fulfilling your purpose and actually finding freedom of time and choice, then going full-time sooner rather than later is often what you should be doing.
How Can You Make the Jump to Full Time?
It’s a very personal decision to go full-time with your property business. I don’t know whether it’s right for you, but it was definitely right for me! And that’s exactly why I want to share my account with you. Eight years ago in 2014, I made the jump to full-time.
For two years, I had reduced my personal expenses down to about £2,000 per month from the income that I already had as a part of my HMO property portfolio, which I had started building back in 2009, and my physio work. My physio job was in part what helped me build my portfolio in the first place, so sacrificing my salary was difficult from a financial point of view.
I worked from my bedroom in a house share for those first two years. I also took a massive hit on my personal income, which had previously been helpful for getting mortgages, but for me, those sacrifices were essential.
Initially, I made the decision to cut down my physio work gradually. For around six to 12 months, I worked for a month or two as a contract physio and then a month or two on my property business. For me, it was good graduation into going full-time into property.
How Can You Get Through the Early Stages?
For the first few years of being full-time with my property business, I made a huge number of personal sacrifices. I worked harder than I’ve ever worked before, and it was the toughest year of my business career to date! There were days of despair, weeks of regret, and months of frustration.
I felt guilty when I wasn’t working, and I questioned why I was doing it. My goal was to have time and that freedom of choice, but for at least the first two years, I didn’t have that. I did have the ability to answer to myself, and I could also work when I wanted to. But honestly, I was having to make so many sacrifices and work so hard.
There were a few things that helped me get through those really tough early stages. From the beginning, I had a plan, clear targets, and a contingency plan to fall back on. The initial progress was really slow, and everything was bootstrapped.
Buying more properties wasn’t possible for a couple of years. I was relying on refinances, but they only come every few years. I was then a bit stuck, so I had a strategic think and reviewed my goals. I decided that I needed cash flow to be my number one priority moving forward, so I started to deploy 70% of my efforts into building a cash-flowing business.
Previously, I thought that I’d go full-time and find a way to magically build my portfolio, but I changed tact. And the business I started to build is ultimately what became my main investment and management group, which has been really successful and grown quickly.
What Happened After a Couple of Years?
In 2017, when it was clear the business was on its own feet, I started to think about building my own portfolio again, how I could raise finance, and who I could work with to help build my portfolio.
I found a way to incorporate working with private investors into my business, and very gradually, we began generating cash and buying assets. This is when things started to move in the right direction.
Keep in mind that it took three to four years to get to the stage where I had replaced the income I had before going full-time in my property business! At this point, I started to take more on as the business was doing increasingly well, and then I began building my team.
Between the fourth and eighth year, I’ve been able to gradually step away from the day-to-day running of the business. This is when I began to feel like I finally was getting my time back, and now I work ON the business more than IN the business.
I can make my own choices and delegate specific activities. I probably could have done some of this slightly sooner, but the reality is growing a business is hard. It’s difficult to know and understand what’s required, and you end up learning a lot on the job.
4 Tips If You’re Thinking About Going Full Time
Here are a few of my top tips based on my hands-on experience if you’re planning to start working on your property business full time.
1. Be Consistent
In the end, it was the consistency piece that really paid off for me. I took every day as it came. I showed up and tried to do the little things as well as I possibly could. I repeated that day in and day out, and gradually, I got the results.
2. Celebrate the Small Wins
Along the way, it was the little wins that kept me focused and motivated. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to stay motivated those first few years. I would’ve become consumed by the sheer amount of effort needed to get my business off the ground.
These small wins would come in loads of different ways, such as bringing a new property on or getting featured in a magazine. Whatever it was, I really relished those small wins and made sure I stopped and celebrated them!
3. Focus on Growing Your Network
After the first few years of being full-time, I started to realise that I had been developing my network without even realising it. I was so immersed in the industry and meeting people locally and nationally, sometimes by coincidence, but I wish I had prioritised this earlier on.
It turned out that some of the people I had connected with could offer me opportunities in all sorts of ways, and these opportunities really helped me capitalise on the growth of my business and personal objectives. And there was no way those relationships would’ve developed if I hadn’t been full-time!
4. Putting Contingencies in Place
Make sure you have contingencies in place to fall back on. I managed to contain some of the risks of going full-time by minimising my personal expenses, having cash saved up, and paying some of my rent upfront. If things didn’t work out in a worst-case scenario, I also could have always gone back to my physio work.
This is really important to consider if you’re thinking about going full-time. Can you contain the risk if you went full-time in your property business and it didn’t work or it didn’t work out as quickly as you wanted or needed them to?
Concluding Thoughts
There’s no perfect time to go full-time in your property business. But before making the leap, make sure you have a good understanding of what’s involved and understand that the worst-case scenario is you go back to what you were doing before. So, if you are seriously thinking about going full-time, I hope this gives you a nudge in the right direction.
This experience will be different for everyone, so you have to make the decision for yourself. Is the sacrifice worth it for you? For me, it definitely was! And if you’re wanting to jump into property full time, I recommend making the leap sooner rather than later.
If you want to ask me and others who made the jump any questions, come over to The HMO Community Facebook Group. And if you need the tools to help you start your HMO property business full time, become a member of The HMO Roadmap!
About the Author:
Andy Graham is the founder and the lead trainer at The HMO Roadmap! He is also the co-founder of The HMO Mastermind and Smart Property, a specialist HMO property investment and management company. He writes as a regular columnist in different magazines about a variety of HMO topics and is the host of The HMO Podcast! Follow Andy on Instagram!