At one point in your life, you might have made some of these excuses:

“I don’t have the time. I don’t have the money.”

“I’m too old. I’m too young.”

“I don’t have enough experience. I don’t deserve this.” 

“I’m too late to the party.” 

These are just some of the more common limiting beliefs that people experience in business, but there are many more! 

What is a limiting belief? 

A limiting belief is a conviction or belief that we think is true and that in some way, limits us from achieving what we want to do in life. It negatively impacts our life because it stops us from moving forward. And the statements above are just a few examples of what stops some people from growing on a personal and professional level. 

In fact, I have gone through some of these myself and I had to overcome so many limiting beliefs to get to where I am now. 

Before I bought my first HMO property, I kept thinking there was no way I could possibly do it. Last year, I had to overcome the limiting belief that I had about starting The HMO Podcast because I didn’t know anything about podcasting. There were lots of incredible podcasts already out there and I didn’t think I could do something as good. 

But, after acknowledging these negative thoughts, I worked through them – I did my research, prepared the necessary equipment and planned each episode! And at the time of writing this blog, we now have more than 30 episodes published on The HMO Podcast, and there’s even more to come!

So by the end of this blog, you’ll learn how to identify your own limiting beliefs. But before we get into that, I want to first give you some context as to how I smashed all of the limiting beliefs I had when I first started my HMO property business. I’m going to share how I grew my business even with all the challenges that came my way, and how I was able to reach my full potential amidst all my self-doubts. 

So, let’s go right back to the year 2009…

My story started in 2009 when I just graduated from uni with a Physiotherapy degree. Shortly after, I moved down to Cornwall, I did a lot of surfing, and I found my first job.  It was a bit difficult to find work at that time because it was at the peak of the recession, but I eventually managed to land myself a temporary role in the NHS. 

It was also around this time that I became interested in HMO properties, so much so that began to save as hard as I possibly could to be able to buy my first property. However, my savings were still not enough to buy my first property so I had to borrow money! This was the first obstacle that I had to overcome. 

Since this was my first property, I didn’t really think I was capable of doing it. I had to keep telling myself that I could do it and that I could make a success out of it. I plucked up the courage to ask my parents to borrow £30,000 (which to this day I’m unsure why they agreed to) and I bought my first property in 2011. I still own that first property, and it has actually been one of my best performing HMOs. 

A year later, I bought my second property. And at that time, my limiting beliefs were quite different. While I already had some confidence from the success of my first property, I was still learning about how to manage it. I kept thinking that maybe I was just lucky with the first one. 

I was still working full time as a physio at this point, and I didn’t have a property manager so there were lots of things I had to take care of myself. Even the people around me advised against it because I was only a couple of years out of university. 

Fast forward to 2013, I was getting pretty bored of my job as a physio and I was really enjoying the property stuff more, even though I was only a few years in. But then I started to feel a bit unwell. I told my GP about some symptoms I was having but I was repeatedly told that it was ‘nothing to worry about’. 

As I continued to feel unwell, I became increasingly frustrated and ‘stressed out’ with my work as a physio, I eventually decided that the only possible source of my symptoms was stress and anxiety from my job! I handed in my notice of resignation and bought a ticket to Canada to take a break!  

However,  I was getting ready to leave, I went back to the GP one last team, and to cut the story short, I was sent to the hospital a few days later after some tests, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I couldn’t believe it! And of course, all of my plans fell through because I needed to stay at home in the UK for treatment and surgery. 

It was a pretty dire circumstance. I went from being on quite a high — having a job I didn’t love (but didn’t hate) and a property business on the side making some extra cash, and I was surfing and on the most part enjoying life, but all of a sudden I had a serious health condition that needed attention! It stopped me in my tracks, and I’d left my job, had nowhere to live and a ticket to Canada that I couldn’t use! Fortunately, I had the income from my first HMOs.  

There were so many limiting beliefs for me at that time. I questioned everything that I’d done and everything that I still wanted to do. It was a really tough time and I had to be really strong mentally and physically to overcome those objections. But I did it, and when my treatment was over, I decided to go full time with my property business. I pleased to say that I’m am absolutely fine now and  fitter than ever! 

Not too long after I made the leap into property full time, I co-founded Smart Property, a specialist HMO property investment and management company. This business grew rapidly and in 2016, we took Smart Property onto CrowdCube, Europe’s biggest crowdfunding platform. We managed to raise £300,000 in equity finance and just a year after we founded our company, CrowdCube valued our business at £1.3 million. 

Looking back, there were so many barriers I had to push through in the past decade and I put a lot of it down to overcoming my limiting beliefs and being completely certain about what I wanted to achieve.

How can YOU smash your own limiting beliefs?

Firstly, we all need to acknowledge that we have limiting beliefs. Simply acknowledging it might seem pointless to some, but it’s actually quite a progressive action to take! 

Most of us don’t stop to think about this kind of stuff but, but simply criticising ourselves when we fail to achieve our goals isn’t enough. We have to acknowledge that there’s something stopping us, and often,  that’s our own limiting beliefs. 

So, when you hit a roadmap, ask yourself what limiting belief are stopping you, and as specific as possible about what they are because it’ll be easier for you to find solutions to overcome them!  

Once you’ve identified them, analyse them, assess your skills and find solutions to give you that confidence to replace your limiting belief with a belief that you can do it. 

This isn’t simply a mental exercise, it’s time for you to systematically replace each and every one of your limiting beliefs by doing the work to beat them. You need to think differently, but you need to take action too! 

To help you start, think about the challenges that you have in your HMO property business today, and which ones would have the most impact on you or your business if you could overcome them. Write it down and evaluate it, and then think about what limiting beliefs are keeping you from overcoming that challenge. 

Determine whether they’re true and justified limiting beliefs, and try to replace them with positive solutions to overcome the challenges. 

So there you go, I hope my story has inspired you to go and smash your limiting beliefs so you can achieve your targets and goals. By consciously doing this, it will help you achieve almost anything that you want in life, and it will certainly help you build the HMO property portfolio you want! 

For more useful resources and in-depth lessons, join The HMO Roadmap today!

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!