How to overcome the challenges to growing your business

The Mortgage Adviser Event in London at the beginning of this month was notable for a number of reasons. It was the best attended event of its type since 2021 and, if you were one of the many hundreds of brokers who visited, you’ll be able to confirm that there was a real buzz in the room. The event also marked just the second time we’ve recorded an episode of The Specialist podcast in front of a live audience. And people did turn up to watch the recording – you can actually hear them cheering!

This was the final episode of this season of The Specialist, which continues to go from strength to strength. We’ve now completed our fourth season of the podcast and we’ve had some fantastic episodes including Emma Jones, founder of Alder Rose Mortgage Services and When The Bank Says No, chatting about life at the helm of one of the UK’s fastest growing specialist mortgage broker firms, Jason Berry from Crystal Specialist Finance, talking about his role in the Mortgage Industry Mental Health Charter (MIMHC), Matt Tristram from Loans Warehouse discussing second charge lending, and industry recruitment expert Pete Gwilliam providing insights into how to advance a career in mortgages.

Throughout, we’ve endeavoured to keep episodes short and punchy, informal but very informative – and this final episode is no exception. I was joined by the fantastic Andy Shields, director at Barcadia Media, Liz Syms, CEO at Connect for Intermediaries, and Alex Hammond, director at Square 1 Media, who spoke about the pressures faced by business owners.

The panel discussed the highs and lows of being a business owner over the years, offering invaluable advice for anyone looking to start their own business. During the conversation, we chatted about topics such as what it’s like to wear different hats as a business leader, the characteristics they believe are essential to being successful, the biggest obstacles to achieving work life balance, the challenges of remote working, and the importance of having a bit of fun.

All the guests are really busy at home and at work and, in this podcast, we find out how they manage to keep all the plates spinning. Andy, for example, has just had his second child and, as we discussed, having children does get easier - my daughter’s 27 and is now sleeping through the night.

You can listen to the season four finale of The Specialist podcast at: https://www.pepper.money/broker/resources/the-specialist-podcast/.