If You Hire Smart People, They’ll Find Their Way

Neil Walton is the founder and Managing Director behind The HMO Guys, Manchester’s fastest-growing independent co-living specialist.

From a back bedroom to a Salford HQ employing nine people, Neil has built a team that now manages around 850 rooms across 150 properties throughout Greater Manchester and Cheshire. His approach is refreshingly simple: property management should be straightforward, responsive, and genuinely useful. Landlords and tenants both seem to agree.

In this episode, Neil sits down with Emma to unpack the journey — and it wasn’t a straight line. He got sacked from his first three jobs in a single year. He walked away from a 15-year recruitment career with zero property experience. And seven years later, he deliberately left his business for seven weeks — not for a holiday, but to find out where the gaps really were.

Emma and Neil explore the hiring philosophy behind an 850-unit portfolio run by just nine people, why Neil believes training and mistakes cost about the same, what stepping back reveals about your leadership, and the counterintuitive link between payment terms and customer respect.

Outside of work you’ll find Neil planning his next trip somewhere sunnier than Salford and backing his team to keep raising the bar.