Having multiple streams of income is part of being an entrepreneur – no matter what industry you’re in! It’s a really useful tool and has become one of the biggest priorities of my property businesses.
I believe this is what we all need to be doing moving forward if we want to build a stable financial future. Personally, I have nine business models, methods, and strategies that generate income.
Read below or listen to the full episode on The HMO Podcast about the nine revenue streams that I have, how and why I’ve developed them over the years, and how I’ve continued to maintain them.
A Little Background on Creating Multiple Revenue Streams
Building all nine of my revenue streams didn’t happen overnight – it’s taken me over 10 years to do this. They didn’t start all at the same time. I focused on one strategy at a time. I got it set up, generating income, and switched onto autopilot, and then I moved on to the next one.
Each revenue stream needs to be working without you having to feed it your energy, resource, and time every single day before you can move on to the next thing. The only way that you’ll be able to do this is by implementing systems and processes and building a team.
I love property and the flexibility, scalability, and long-term stability that this kind of investment provides, but at my heart, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m always looking for ways to maximise my efforts and resources.
Creating multiple streams of income has allowed me to achieve my professional and personal goals much more quickly. My efforts, results, and income compounded very quickly and that has allowed me to continue to reinvest back into my businesses, the assets that I own, and my next ventures!
My 9 Income Streams within My Property Businesses
For starters, my first income stream was my property portfolio, which includes HMOs and other properties. I still prioritise my portfolio above anything else, but over the last 10 years, it’s had to take a back seat at times while I focused my attention on getting some of the other income streams off the ground.
My second and third revenue streams are my rent-to-rent deals and management company. With these strategies, I’m managing the same sorts of properties and tenants but just in slightly different ways.
The fourth income stream is my investment and acquisition service. We help investors all over the world acquire HMOs in the UK and specifically in the areas we already invest and operate in. We also help these overseas investors manage the refurbishments and then property and tenant management once the property is up and running as a HMO.
Then, the fifth stream of revenue is The HMO Roadmap, which is an online learning platform for HMO investors with loads of content, resources, advice, and training to help you start, scale, and systemise your HMO portfolio. The sixth is the two property and business masterminds that I help run.
My eighth revenue stream is a content subscription service. I create a huge amount of content and send it to our landlord database in the form of direct to vendor marketing. But as I only send that to landlords where we operate, we offer that out to other people around the country so that they can send it to their own database.
Finally, the ninth income stream is partnerships and affiliations. Over the years, we’ve worked with some great partners in the property industry that we’ve been able to monetise.
As an overview, here are my nine streams of income:
- Property portfolio
- Rent-to-rent deals
- Property management
- Investment & acquisition service
- The HMO Roadmap
- Masterminds
- One-to-one mentoring
- Content subscription service
- Partnerships and affiliations
You may have noticed that these income streams are all closely related! It wasn’t a huge leap to offer these additional services and products. In many cases, they’re all leaning on the same resources and expertise.
9 Tips to Help You Work Less, Achieve More, & Build Additional Revenue Streams
It may sound like a lot of work to build additional revenue streams, but there are strategies to help you work less and achieve more in your businesses. Here are nine principles that will allow you to effectively build an income stream, set it up, and move on to the next!
1. Understand the 80-20 Principle
The idea behind this principle is that 20% of our input is where 80% of our results will be created. So, identify your most productive areas, which are your income-generating activities, focus on them, and execute them really well.
2. Adopt the 70-20-10 Model
With the 70-20-10 model, we need to think about having a primary, secondary, and tertiary revenue stream. For many of us, our primary will be our property portfolio.
You need to think about putting 70% of your efforts into the primary stream, 20% into the secondary one, and 10% into a tertiary one. This will help ensure you’re focusing your time, energy, and resources exactly where you should be.
3. Focus on MITs
The third principle is all about focusing on the most important tasks (MITs). Every single day there should be MITs, non-negotiable tasks that you need to do and can’t miss out on.
4. Eliminate, Simplify, Automate, and Delegate
Find areas you can eliminate, simplify, automate, and delegate. If you don’t implement this into whatever revenue streams you’re building, you’ll never be able to move on to the next one. If you have to be involved in the delivery and execution of everything, you won’t be able to scale yourself out of it and move on to the next model!
5. Batch Processes
When you sit down to do certain tasks, make sure that you do a lot of it all at once. It’s easier this way as you can get into a rhythm and flow.
6. Remove Distractions
The sixth principle is to remove distractions to help you be more productive. Find what works for you. Put your phone away or get out of the office where there can be a lot of distractions.
7. Improve Your Skills
Always look for areas where you can skill up and strengthen your knowledge and experience within your industry.
8. Start Early
If you want to build multiple revenue streams, you need to be getting up early. I’m not saying you need to be a part of the 5 am club, but you do need to be starting your day early and getting down to business!
9. Be Proactive, Not Reactive
Building a good business and multiple revenue streams is all about being proactive and having the foresight to see what opportunities, threats, and risks are ahead of you. From the beginning, make sure you understand what will make things easier and more difficult.
Hopefully, this has given you some inspiration and ideas of exactly how you could build different streams of income into your business. If you’re ready to start, scale, and systemise your property portfolio and HMO business, become a member of 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!