The Property Unleashed Podcast

Fears, Doubts, and Property Deals, A Brutally Honest Chat

• Mark Fitzgerald • Episode 326

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Confronting our deepest fears takes tremendous courage, especially when those fears are tied to financial security and self-worth. In this raw and unfiltered episode, Mark Fitzgerald pulls back the curtain on his personal journey from corporate burnout to property entrepreneurship, revealing the doubts and anxieties that nearly held him back from changing his life.

After 16 years climbing the corporate ladder, Mark found himself trapped in the all-too-familiar hamster wheel—dreading each workday, feeling emotionally numb, and seeing no clear path forward. "I wasn't really feeling like I had proper feelings anymore," he confesses. "I even paraglided off a very big mountain in Turkey because I wanted to feel scared." This powerful moment of clarity forced him to confront a difficult truth: something had to change.

With remarkable candor, Mark discusses the terrifying leap of taking voluntary redundancy, the kitchen table moments of despair wondering if success would ever come, and the persistent voice of self-doubt that whispered he might fail. Yet through consistent action, building the right support network, and refusing to give up, he successfully established thriving businesses in HMOs, serviced accommodation, and holiday lets.

What makes this episode particularly valuable is Mark's insistence that his success isn't due to special talent or privilege. "I'm nothing special," he emphasizes. "You've just got to know what you're doing. Do the right things in the right order, consistently and persistently." He debunks the myth of overnight success and offers practical wisdom on creating momentum in your property journey.

Ready to push past your own fears and take that first step toward building your property business? Visit thepropertyunleashed.com for free tools and resources, and stay tuned for information about Mark's upcoming community and live implementation workshops. Remember: "Be the best version of you you can be, and that, my friend, is how you live a fulfilled life."

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Speaker 1:

Fear doesn't need to stop you. We all have our own stories. What's yours? Hello, my name is Mark Fitzgerald. It's great to have you joining me here today.

Speaker 1:

So if you're looking at getting started in property, you're looking at building a property business, you're in the right place. But everybody has a journey. Everybody has a story to tell. Now, maybe you've just started yours. Maybe you've been on your path for quite some time now and you're feeling a little bit demoralized. Maybe things aren't quite going the way that you wanted.

Speaker 1:

Well, let me just let and set you straight on that. The path will never be smooth. Even for my good self it wouldn't smooth. And I just wanted to really share with you some of the fears, some of the worries, some of the doubts that I've had myself in building my property businesses over the last six, seven years. Now that we've been doing this, we're in the HMO market, we're in the serviced accommodation holiday let market as well, and whilst a lot of people say I've been successful and I feel like I have had good success, we've done very, very well. We've built good, strong businesses over that time and we've helped plenty of other people do it as well it doesn't come without its fears, without its worries, without its doubts, without its procrastinations. We're all human at the end of the day, and I think if anybody's out there saying to you that they don't have these sort of fears, worries and doubts that crop up time and time again at different times, then they're probably not telling you the actual facts. There's never a smooth road. In anything that you want to do, if it's worth doing. It's probably going to be difficult, it's going to be challenging, you're going to have ups and downs, it's going to be a roller coaster, as I always like to say, but you need to stay the path. You need to make sure that you're on the right journey, doing the right things for yourself, because whilst things will seem hard, you can make them easier as you start to grow, as you start to put systems in place.

Speaker 1:

When I worked as a senior manager for 16 years, I enjoyed you know, a lot of 10 years. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed working my way up the corporate ladder. I enjoyed my life. It was stressful, it was hard. It wasn't like it was sunshine and rainbows and I danced all the way into my job each and every day. Not at all, but it was what I thought was the right thing to do. Being a father of two sons, married bills to pay mortgages, to pay lots of commitments, lots of credits and things as well. We've all got those. You've got to make sure that you keep the lights turned on and I was always looking for the next pay rise.

Speaker 1:

But I became demoralized, I became bored in what I was doing and I didn't enjoy it anymore. And I think so many of us get to that place, get to that point where maybe the job that we did, it used to fulfill us, we used to enjoy it, or maybe we enjoy the people. I used to enjoy the people around. Not all of them, I'll be quite honest with you. There's some people I didn't enjoy being around, but most of the people I did enjoy, you know, the camaraderie and the banter and the fun that we had, as well as the seriousness of work. Of course, you've got to make sure that you're doing the work, but for me it was very, very difficult to see a way out, to see that there were other options out there.

Speaker 1:

Now, a lot of that I look back now and realize was my mindset. I had a very closed mindset. Why? Because I'd never been educated. I'd never been educated to have an open mindset. In whatever it is that I was doing. I've always had, I believe and feel, inside me an entrepreneurial spirit, a spirit that wants to get out there. I've always done a bit of wheeling and dealing, buying stuff here for a bit cheaper, selling it a bit there. I've been in sales, in shops and all sorts of different environments as well, so I have enjoyed all of that. But I wanted to do something for myself. But I just didn't know what it was and I dabbled. We've probably all been there and dabbled in a few different things a bit of e-commerce, looking at potentially trading and things. Now, different things about e-commerce, looking at potentially trading and things. Now, I do do trading, but I do it as a hobby. Now I don't try and make a living out of it and I do enjoy that as well.

Speaker 1:

But property and things seemed like a dream. It seemed like it was too far away for me to actually be able to get involved in and to start. Why? Because I didn't have loads of money. I didn't have lots of money and you always think in property you need lots of money to get going and to get started and in most cases you do, and you probably is right in saying you do need some money. Now. You can do no money down deals. You can joint venture, you can get investors. We all know these things. But for me I felt trapped. I felt like a hamster on that hamster wheel, just spinning, just spinning around every single day.

Speaker 1:

Groundhog Day, wake up, drag yourself out of bed, thinking oh my God, not another day there Get in the car, drive to work. Half the time you can't even remember the journey because you're dreading just turning up. What's the day going to bring today? And then, of course, you work your way through the day. You drag yourself through it and by the time you get to your way through the day, you drag yourself through it and by the time you get to the end of the day, you cannot wait. You cannot wait for clocking off time, for time to leave, okay. And it doesn't end there. I mean the role that I had. You took away a lot of those worries, a lot of those stresses with you. It's not healthy and it's not good, and I got myself down into a quite a dark place.

Speaker 1:

At that time. I wasn't really feeling like I had proper feelings anymore. I just felt numb and I even paraglided off of a very big mountain in Turkey because I wanted to feel scared. That's when I knew something was wrong, something was up and I needed to change. I needed to change my circumstances. I needed to change what I was doing. Why? Because I was drifting through life, and this life, this time, that we have on this planet it's not the longest, you know. At the end of the day, we think that we're going to be here forever, but trust me, we're not going to be here forever and we've got to make sure that we act and we take control of our lives so that we get the most out of each and every day. It's very, very precious this time that we've got here, but for years I'm not going to say months, days for years I just plodded along.

Speaker 1:

I was happy in my home life. I was enjoying my family time, watching my sons grow up. It was great to be there. I didn't see it as much as I wish I had, but I was happy at home. I just was happy. I was just miserable in everything else that I was doing and I needed to change something. And you get to that point. You're probably there, maybe you've been there. Maybe you've done it, maybe you're there now, but I was at a point where I had to draw a line in the sand and it was either we step over that line and try something new and what's the worst that can happen or we just shut up and get on with life. We let life pass us by, we let it drift past us.

Speaker 1:

For me, I decided to bury my head in the book. I decided to get some training, get some support. I decided to get out there and build a property business. Okay, that could replace my income. The whole plan was to build it up whilst I was in my full-time job.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you've listened to any of my podcast episodes or videos before, you'll know that I took voluntary redundancy because I was that miserable and I had to get out. My wife could see that she backed me 100%, which, again, was very, very scary because whilst you've got that support and I thank her and love her for that support you've then got to make sure that you get out there and make sure that things happen. You've got to well, you don't want to fail. I think I'm just being brutally honest with you. You do not want to get out there and fail. I certainly didn't want to fail in anything, and I was scared. I was scared. I was scared about failing. I was scared about not getting it right. I was scared that I'd have to go out there and get another job.

Speaker 1:

All of these things were going through my mind when I took voluntary redundancy. I had a set amount of time, a set amount of money to live on before that ran out. And then what was the worst case scenario? Well, I wouldn't have had to get a job Now. For me, the worst case scenario was I would have got potentially a part-time job whilst building my property business, whilst building my rent-to-rent business, but I didn't want to do that. For me, that seemed like it would be a massive loss. I would lose face. People would think less of me. But realistically, all of those thoughts are just impressions in my own mind. It's my own thoughts.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people said to me they admired me for the courage that I had, for getting out there and doing things like this. A lot of people said to me that they wish they could do the same thing that I've done you know what I mean and got out there, and that is very, very inspiring. And a lot of people, not a lot well, a few, a few people, because I try not to surround myself with negative people. But a few people said you're crazy, you shouldn't be doing that, taking a big risk while you're doing such a thing. But I don't speak to those people very often, so it doesn't really matter that much. But most people were very supportive, which was nice.

Speaker 1:

Now you might be in an environment that's not as supportive and that can make life very, very difficult, which is why it's so, so important, as I always say, to get out there and start to surround yourself with like-minded people in a safe environment, a safe community. I always say it's something so, so important when it comes to my training, coaching, when it comes to me helping others and I get a real kick out of helping others because there's a lot of people out there that don't think they can do it, that were like me for years. I was like that for years. I'm trying to get people out of that, to make sure that they can see that there is a pathway, there is a journey that they can get on and they can take themselves on, to give themselves more financial security, to give themselves more time, freedom and property is an amazing platform to do that, whether you're a deal sourcer, whether you're doing rent to rent, whether you're doing flips, anything like that. I help a whole host of different people now with the skills that I've had. We've done deal sourcing, we've done rent to rent, we've done lease options, I work with investors, we do flips and things. So there's a lot out there that we've got experiencing. I like to say that we can help and share that experience with others who are getting started, the same way that people did with me when I was getting started.

Speaker 1:

So, whilst I had those fears, those doubts, those worries, I had to actually push through those. There were times when I had my head in my hands. I remember, at the old house, sat at a kitchen table head in hands, thinking to myself will this ever happen for me? Will this ever work? And it didn't just flick a switch and all of a sudden, all of these deals came my way. I had to work really hard, really hard. I had to make sacrifices, I had to push myself to make sure that I went out there and got the results that I did.

Speaker 1:

And you can do it, anybody can do it. I'm nothing special, okay. Anybody else that's doing. This is nothing special. You've just got to know what you're doing. Do the right things in the right order, consistently and persistently, to get the results that you need Facebook lives and just getting in there and sharing posts and things, as other people do as well is just to try and make sure that you stay on that path. You stay true to yourself, but you stay on that journey and don't be one of these people that just flitter around here, there and everywhere, trying to do a bit here, trying to do a bit there. It doesn't work. I'll try this. It looks easier. I'll try that. There is no such thing as get rich quick, get rich easy or anything. You've got to get out there and you've got to put it to work and now you can work smart. I don't believe that you should be hustling 24-7 a day and burning yourself out, although I've done that myself. You can do things in a laid-back manner and still see great results. Again, it's about having the right systems and it's about putting the right things in place.

Speaker 1:

Today, I wanted to be brutally honest with you. Yes, I've had my fears. I still have fears now when I do deals and things, when I look at things, but I have the knowledge now to be able to back that up. We all have that little voice in our head, don't we? That's that little voice that you've got telling you now. I don't have a little voice in my head, that little voice that likes sometimes, though you've just got to ask it to be quiet and get on with it. Why? Because you know what you're doing and you know the right path to be on.

Speaker 1:

I help you with my podcast, with my free YouTube channels. We have a newsletter as well, and do check out thepropertyunleashedcom for free tools and resources. There's free eBooks, spreadsheets. I want to see people doing good deals. You need to know how to work out the numbers. Go over there, download the spreadsheet. It'll help you stack those deals. We've got eGuides and we've got free training as well and, of course, we do have paid training for as well.

Speaker 1:

But I am now on a mission to build a community of like-minded people you will start to see it more and more this year and beyond where we can get together, be safe in the environment and help push each other along. And not only that, but I will also be running live workshops yes, live workshops this year, where we won't just get you in there to show you or teach you or train you what to do, although we will do that. We will actually make sure that we have time for you to start implementing exactly what you're learning so you can start that flywheel going. You can start to get that momentum before you've even finished the workshops. And I believe that there's a lot of people out there right here right now that have the knowledge, that have watched hundreds, thousands of YouTube videos and listened to the podcasts and read the books and they know what to do. They paid for the training, they know exactly what to do, but they still are not getting the results. And that has baffled me for a while. But I think now I can finally put my finger on it and in most cases it comes down to just not being in the right community, not being around the right people.

Speaker 1:

It is very, very difficult to not achieve great things when you're around people achieving great things. If you support yourself and put yourself into that environment, you will be sure to put yourself in the right place and not fail. And why is that? Because if you keep doing things consistently and persistently, you keep pushing yourself and you keep striving on your goals, to achieve your results, and you're seeing other people doing the same. Knowing this works, there's nothing to hold you back. There should be no limiting beliefs, there should be no self-doubt. So make sure that you tap into communities like that and we are going to have one of the most cost-effective communities ever, I think, put out there.

Speaker 1:

I'm spearheading this, so watch this space. If you are interested in this, then there will be a link below the video for you to register your interest, and then why not come and join us? I hope this episode's helped you. At the end of the day, it's all about getting out there, taking action and making sure that you are focused on your goals, nobody else's. Yes, put yourself in a supportive community, but don't judge yourself on other people's performances. Judge yourself on you. Be the best version of you you can be, and that, my friend, is how you live a fulfilled life and a happy life as well. So make sure that you start practicing it all today. Bye for now.