Digital Social Hour - From Homeless to Millionaire: Real Estate Secrets Revealed I Christian Osgood DSH #488

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

🔥 From Homeless to Millionaire: Real Estate Secrets Revealed! 🔥 Ever wondered how someone can go from having nothing to owning 225 rental properties in just two and a half years? 🏠💰 Tun...e in now to the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly, where we uncover Christian Osgood's astonishing journey from rock bottom to real estate mogul! 📈 In this episode, Christian spills the beans on his rollercoaster ride—from living out of his car and losing everything to a cult, to mastering the art of real estate with zero money down. 🚗➡️🏢 His story is packed with valuable insights about creative financing, the power of perseverance, and the importance of sticking to your strengths. Don't miss out on these real estate secrets that could change your life! 🔑 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Join the conversation and be part of an exclusive journey to financial freedom. 💬👥 Don't miss out on the next big thing in real estate! 💸 #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #Podcast #ApplePodcasts #Spotify #RealEstate #HomelessToMillionaire #ChristianOsgood #FinancialFreedom #CreativeFinancing #SubscribeNow #InvestmentJourney #Homeless #RealEstateInvestmentStrategies #SeanKelly #RealEstateJourney CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Intro 0:40 - Starting from Nothing 2:40 - First Real Estate Deal 4:14 - Buying a 38-Unit Property 5:09 - Buying a Resort 7:11 - Buying a Waterfront Resort 9:11 - Funding Our 200+ Unit Hotel 10:48 - Staying in Your Lane 15:16 - Market Predictions 17:11 - Disagreements with Pace Morby 20:43 - Dave Ramsey 24:22 - Paying Off Debt 26:30 - Money Doesn't Matter 28:30 - Optimize Your Sleep 31:10 - Not Talking for 99 Days 32:10 - Cults are Crazy 34:43 - Multifamily Strategy 35:33 - See You Next Time APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/D2cLkWfJx46pDK1MA BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: Jenna@DigitalSocialHour.com GUESTS: Christian Osgood https://www.instagram.com/christianosgood/ https://www.multifamilystrategy.com/ SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Had I stayed in my lane and focused on what I'm best at. This takes a lot of time, takes a lot of planning. And when stuff comes up in hospitality that I don't know, I don't know. We have to pause everything, learn something new. The lesson I got from this, and this is for everyone, find the thing that you're the best in the world at and just double, triple, quadruple down on that thing. Agreed.
Starting point is 00:00:20 Had we done that, I would be much happier. I'd be much wealthier. Wherever you guys Are watching this show I would truly appreciate it If you follow or subscribe It helps a lot With the algorithm It helps us get bigger
Starting point is 00:00:33 And better guests And it helps us Grow the team Truly means a lot Thank you guys For supporting And here's the episode Alright guys
Starting point is 00:00:40 We're talking real estate today We got Christian Osgood here He bought 225 rental properties In two and a half years Thanks Thanks for coming on, man. Dude, thanks for having me. And that is incredible because you didn't have any money when you started, right? Yeah, dude, I started from nothing, nothing. I had got out of college, tried to figure out what I wanted to do. I actually ended up trying to start a church. That turned into a cult. They took all my money and they didn't let me speak for like 100 days. So when I say I started from nothing, I started from like homeless, no dollars, no idea what I wanted to do and built up from there. We got to dive into that story because we can't leave it at that.
Starting point is 00:01:12 Yeah, yeah. We probably should talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So what happened there? Well, I always want to be an entrepreneur. Went to college, got a business degree. I was like, I don't know what I want to do. Throughout college, had some frustration with the church in general.
Starting point is 00:01:24 And I think there's a lot of people who go to church on sunday and then that's it like church has become entertainment for a lot of people i was like i want to build something different joined a group started normal slowly started getting a little weirder yeah one thing at a time like hey we're gonna restrict our meals a little bit get in shape i'm like oh get in shape that sounds good oh we're gonna start doing a lot of physical activity. We're going to work out twice a day together. I'm like, oh, this sounds all healthy. Good. And then it got into like, hey, you know, we're going to get a little intense here for like three months. We're just not going to really hang out with family. I was
Starting point is 00:01:54 like, oh, okay. Weird. Long story short, in the course of nine months, went from like normal, healthy adventure to like, don't talk to anyone for like a hundred days, like vow silence. Oh my God. A hundred days. You had to be silent for a hundred days. Yeah. Wasn't allowed to talk to anyone. Didn't talk too much, which funny enough, I'm a professional speaker now, so. Wow. And you made it all a hundred days?
Starting point is 00:02:13 I made it 99. Holy crap. And then I got to go home for Thanksgiving. I was like, oh good. Everyone else thinks this is insane too. But yeah, no isolation, food deprivation, sleep deprivation. That is like the formula for brainwashing someone. Went through that though. So zero looks different for everyone. Zero looks like they took my money.
Starting point is 00:02:33 They took like my sanity for about 100 days. Got out of that. Got a sales job. Started rebuilding. Always wanted to get into real estate. Fast forward several years into the future and bought two duplexes. Nice. It was all my money.
Starting point is 00:02:48 I'd spent eight years saving up house, couple duplexes. How much was it? The duplexes? Yeah. First one I bought for $400,000, $30,000 down. Okay. Second one was 101% financed, hard money with $50,000 of reno. Got it.
Starting point is 00:03:03 So I spent $80,000 all in for two duplexes. The cash flowed about combined $2,000 a month, which was exactly the mortgage on my house. So my real estate was paying for my real estate. In eight years, I realized, wait, I have decent income. I have rental properties. I'm still not rich. I just don't pay a mortgage. I don't want to do this for eight years and just build, build. It's so slow to buy small multifamily. So I met this kid in my office. I left the CoStar Group, and he'd never worked a job. He worked Safeway for, I think it was 35 minutes.
Starting point is 00:03:35 It's the only job he's ever had. 35 minutes? 35 minutes. He had no money. That's a story, too. And he had bought, his name's Cody Davis. I partnered with him on a few projects, quite a few projects. Nice.
Starting point is 00:03:45 He had 30 rental properties at 20 years old. Damn. And I was like, how are you doing this? Because I've worked a fairly high paid career. I've come through a lot. I've learned a lot. And I don't have anywhere near that. I want to get to 30 units by 30 and I'm 29.
Starting point is 00:04:00 He's like, well, I can't help you because I want to take out this seller finance 38 plex and I'll put you at 42 units, and 42 ain't 30. Talked to my wife, and about five minutes in, she's like, I would like to own 42 units. We should figure this out. And so we bought a 38 plex, seller financed, 15% down, raised the money, $2 million purchase. It only had a few problems with it. Chicken infestation. I'm not kidding.
Starting point is 00:04:24 Chickens everywhere. Chickens? Yeah. There's wild chickens? Chickens everywhere. Chickens? Yeah. There's wild chickens? No, no. Domestic. They lived in two of the units. Homeless camp on the back.
Starting point is 00:04:32 Bad roof. But $2 million for 38 units. The small mom and pop investors didn't want to buy it. Too big of a project. The large investors went, it's too heavy of a lift. It's too much work for us to get the upside because we can buy lower upside deals that are easier for us to do yeah for two young guys who are like we can take this out no money out of pocket stabilized it should be worth three and a half million dollars fast forward a year and a half later we get a valuation of 3.8 million dollars we cash out a
Starting point is 00:05:00 million dollars from the property we still hold that deal today just did a cash out a million dollars from the property. We still hold that deal today. Just did a cash out refi. Nice. And yeah, since then, did a 12 plex, 6 plex, 7 plex. Bought a resort that we totally should not have bought. I'm not a hospitality guy. But we did a whole bunch without having any money. Now we have a little bit. You should have reserves if you buy $30 million of real estate.
Starting point is 00:05:21 But building it, we learned that it doesn't take money it takes a deal to buy real estate right you figure out the debt and the equity a few rules around that but it's a really simple game yeah and you did it in two and a half years man it was fairly quick yes it was very intense yeah because traditional real estate where you buy and just hold for 10 20 years you made more than that in two and a half years basically yes because we bought because we bought aggressively and we bought deals on a couple of basic principles, which is we had this mentor early. He could buy anything.
Starting point is 00:05:51 And he had bought it right before 2008. He bought like 20 condos, zero down. And then 2008 hit and he lost them all. And then he bought all this office, zero dollars down, raised the capital, seller financed. And then **** and he lost all his. Also, he way overpaid for that office. He should never have bought that building. He could buy anything.
Starting point is 00:06:11 And I remember sitting in the office, talking to my buddy, Cody, going, if we could do that, if we could buy anything, but then not lose it, we would just be rich. And so we did all our underwriting. Like, oh, that's all you have to do. It's just, how do you buy it? And how do you never lose it?
Starting point is 00:06:29 So the deal is deal, debt, and equity if you need an equity partner or you can just buy it all with debt. But you find the deal, you find the money, and as long as the cash flow is on long-term fixed-rate debt, you get to keep the property. Right now, interest rates are really high. Most of my debt is 10-, 15-, 30-year debt. I'm just going to ride it out because all my properties pay me to wait. So you have a down market, you get paid to wait,
Starting point is 00:06:49 you have an up market, you get all the bonuses that everyone gets when you get rich in real estate, when all the appreciation takes off because we print too much money. But the whole thing is just stack cash flowing real estate and just negotiate the deals in a way where they pay you day one and continue to pay you through the whole project. And every time you do that, your income goes up. If you want to accelerate it, buy larger deals. Right. I love that. Talk to me about this $5 million resort you bought and what went through that. Oh boy. Okay. So this was in our first year, back end of our first year, we had a lot of success buying things. We're like, wow, we're really good at this business thing, which is not true yet. We did not have the experience. I had a property management company that was doing well. Our
Starting point is 00:07:27 course and mentorship program, multifamily strategy had taken off and done really well. We had people all over the country buying deals consistently. And with all that success, I was like, we're going to be able to run a resort. Like we've been, Midas Touch, everything we touch turns to gold. This is real estate. I think we could run this thing better. What we learned is I took all my multifamily people and I put them in a hospitality job. I distracted them from what we're best in the world at, which is value add multifamily and negotiating cash flowing, stable rental deals. I can put in property management, like simple business model, buy them, put them into management, lease them up, stabilize maintenance. We're set for that
Starting point is 00:08:03 resort. No idea how to run it how we got the deal was the same way we do everything i met an owner had done something i wanted to do had this amazing resort on the water foothills the olympic mountains you can actually see orcas go through the canal from some of the cabins where is this it's in union washington so it's about an hour and a half south of seattle on a little canal funny enough the west coast only fjord uh but there's cool little saltwater oasis uh right on the foothills of the olympic mountains we met them and this is how we did everything in multifamily but we just met the owners who've done it my business partner cody actually lived on site with them for a month. We learned the operations and they financed three
Starting point is 00:08:45 and a half million dollars at four and a half percent, which made the deal work. We needed a million dollar down. And I found the larger capital raises are easier than the smaller. I figured we need maybe two or three people with some money to put that together. First person that we met with seven minutes in, I was like, this is our vision for the property. And this is why I think we should take it out. We need a million dollar raise. They're like, well, how much money do you need from us? I was like, probably. Are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business
Starting point is 00:09:20 and life. Click the application link below. And here's the episode guys. If we got a few people, maybe 333 up to three partners, I'd be comfortable. They're like, what if we just funded all of it? What would that look like? Check for a million dollars? Like, let's do that. Wow. And so we bought it with a one capital partner, a million dollar capital raise that took seven minutes to raise and a seller finance note that took them about seven seconds to sign jeez yep how'd you find this guy uh that was a deal that was listed online for about two years okay no the financer i mean oh the financer that was someone funny enough that was the person who i bought my first duplex from oh back in 2020 so
Starting point is 00:10:02 he saw you killing it yeah they saw They saw us online. I've worked with them on a couple of projects. They're actually a private lender. And they came in and said, what if we were an equity partner on this one? And I was like, that is what I need. If you're trying to conserve cashflow and partners are variables, I don't like variables in real estate. But if you're trying to conserve cashflow and you have a deal where it's like, hey, we're trying to take the operations from here to here. An equity partner doesn't cost money monthly. They're going to be paid out on the back end of the deal. So having someone come in and partner with you on an opportunity can be a way to conserve cash flow day one.
Starting point is 00:10:34 So it's the right deal structure from them. They got some tax benefits for being a partner on a large property like that. And so it worked well with them with their tax planning, with what they wanted to do with their money, and worked perfectly for our project. Deal structure-wise, we did excellent on that. And so it worked well with them with their tax planning, with what they wanted to do with their money and work perfectly for a project deal structure wise. We did excellent on that. Yeah. Getting out of our lane for multifamily, absolutely the wrong thing to do. It would be so easy to be at 500 multifamily units instead of, you know, just over 200. Had I stayed in my lane and focused on what I'm best at, this takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of planning. And when stuff comes up in hospitality that I don't know I don't know, we have to pause everything, learn something new.
Starting point is 00:11:12 The lesson I got from this, and this is for everyone, find the thing that you're the best in the world at and just double, triple, quadruple down on that thing. Agreed. Had we done that, I would be much happier. I'd be much wealthier. No one plays a perfect game. That was my, I call it the stupid tax. When you don't know what you don't know, I paid a heavy tax on that, losing a lot of time in business. It's important to stick
Starting point is 00:11:36 with what you know, man. It's just so tempting to get into other industries and other investments, but what you know is hard to beat in terms of ROI. Yeah. There's a lot of serial entrepreneurs out there. I don't know a lot of very rich serial entrepreneurs. The people are like, I want to start something. I want to start something else. Yeah. I just say master the one thing. If you're five years in to mastery and you have something where I'm like, Hey, I think this is a logical expansion. That could make sense. Like right now we're converting hotels into multifamily. That's a sensible step where I'm like, I can take
Starting point is 00:12:08 my teams, I can take my systems. We don't want to run a hotel, but I have enough construction crews where I can actually do the work. And the one thing to learn is just how do you want to work smoothly with the city to pull this off? That's a sensible step to expanding your business. Going from
Starting point is 00:12:23 hey, I run multifamily. I should be able to run a hotel. That's stupid. Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare. right that's a sensible step to expanding your business going from hey i run multi-family i should be able to run a hotel that's stupid yeah that sounds like a nightmare customer service is the worst part about real estate out here yes it can be hard especially in washington state where you have laws where you can have criminals in your units and they're very hard to get rid of oh yeah yep i didn't know that about washington state will pay for your lawyer if you're being evicted. Eviction costs about five. The state will pay? Yeah, so you get free legal representation for non-pay. And I've had people, like we've inherited tenants,
Starting point is 00:12:54 where they've put holes in the roof, damaged security deposits, never paid once, and it still took a couple months to get them out. Squatters, they call them? Yep. They're squatters, but they were tenants who never paid. They were the old person's tenants. They never paid.
Starting point is 00:13:10 So in Washington, you're still legally a tenant whether you pay or not. So you have to go full ownership. And then the state will represent you. That's crazy. And the state lawyers are good, man. Are they? They got such better lawyers than everyone else. Wow, that sounds rigged.
Starting point is 00:13:24 It's funny. From their point of view, I see why they do it then. Yes, yes. We heavily incentivize people in Washington State to be terrible tenants. So you're requiring three months up front, aren't you? Yeah. Now, the nice thing, if you're an investor, you look at a market like that, and you're like, why the heck would I invest?
Starting point is 00:13:39 The nice thing is you've never heard of a Texan trying to invest in Washington. People from Washington try to invest in Texas all the time. As far as deal flow, you have opportunities to pick up things because it's hard. There are properties where people just don't want to do the lift, and that's where we've made a lot of our money is. That first deal, that 38, no one wanted to do the lift because it was a hard property. And for two guys in their 20s, that ended up being a million-dollar opportunity. In the first year, we made seven figures in real estate by taking one hard deal.
Starting point is 00:14:09 I don't think you can do that in every market. So because it's hard, there is opportunity. There's also more risk when your state is actively against you renovating your property. Yeah, you said you had a homeless camp on that one, right? Yes. Fortunately, that got moved really quick. That was a fluke. That wasn't planned. Oh, well. We had a very, very that one, right? Yes. Fortunately, that got moved really quick. That was a fluke. That wasn't planned.
Starting point is 00:14:25 Oh, well. We had a very, very wealthy developer buy the land lot behind us, same exact time. And they went ahead and cleared all the homeless and they built a beautiful wall all the way around our property. That was fortunate. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:38 The rest of it was hard work. That one was just straight luck. That got self-resolved. There's always some luck involved with success. There is. There is. I never realized that you could just buy's always some luck involved with success. There is. There is. I never realized that you could just buy land and then build a wall and kick everyone out.
Starting point is 00:14:49 That was... I didn't know that either. I don't know how they pulled that off, but whatever they did, it was helpful. Yeah. I found that if you're not getting the luck you want, you either need better dice or you need to roll more dice.
Starting point is 00:14:58 In our case, we just did a lot of projects. We get some good rolls. We've gotten some bad rolls, but you just keep playing the game and as long as you're buying again long-term cash flowing fixed rate debt you can do it infinitely yeah keep buying deals you have stable income you can survive the long haul absolutely how do you feel about the market this year and next year market this year gosh everyone has a different opinion don't they yeah i think it's going to be fairly stagnant i mean we saw rates come down a little bit we've seen them't they? Yeah. I think it's going to be fairly stagnant. I mean, we saw rates come down a little bit. We've seen them pop up a little bit. I think
Starting point is 00:15:28 it's going to be fairly stable for most of this year. I think what we're going to run into in the next, let's say six to 18 months is banks aren't proactive. They're reactive. So for those trying to refinance or purchase the bank debt, banks are going to look at the last few years where real estate options like syndications, where they relied on a lot of variable rate debt in a lot of these, a lot of those tanked. Banks are going to look at that and say, hey, because there were real estate problems two years ago when interest rates doubled, we're going to now start freezing multifamily. I think it's going to slow down the flow of money through conventional finance quite a bit because they're going to look at
Starting point is 00:16:05 the data and say, hmm, I don't know how I feel about hospitality, how I feel about multifamily. And I'm already starting to see a little bit of that where some larger banks are saying, we're not really wanting to deploy more into multifamily right now. I think we'll continue to see that for the next, again,
Starting point is 00:16:21 six to 18 months. It'll probably get worse. So if you're doing a refi, do it now. And after that, we're still printing a ton of money. I think stagnant for a little bit, banks slow down, and then it's going to pick up, and we're going to skyrocket in rents. Right. So the best time to buy would be next year, you're thinking? I would say, well, it depends on how you're buying.
Starting point is 00:16:40 If you're doing stuff like I'm doing where it's 10, 15-year debt, right now are the music stopped is like the best time to play. While everyone else is like, hey, I'm going to sit and wait or my money's on the sideline or I'm trying to get out of positions. That is my favorite time to take the field. When everyone else is gone, I just walk on. Yeah. And they're in the bear market, right? Yep. I love operating there, especially if you're a creative finance person. The deal isn't dependent on the market. The deal is on the deal yeah so we'll just keep doing good deals all the time we just find more of them when the other players aren't competing absolutely speaking of creative financing let's talk about our good friend pace morby oh boy pace morby okay you said earlier you
Starting point is 00:17:17 and him had some disagreements what was that about we have oh well we had one short that he posted forever ago where I had mentioned, he had a thing and it was just kind of, it was funny because it was just like a little text, but it was like, hey, if you want to speed things up, totally legitimate advice, by the way, but he's like, if you want to speed things up, tell people you're about to hop on a plane. I'm like, okay. But in the video, he was clearly not hopping on a plane.
Starting point is 00:17:39 And so I was like, you know, or you could form a relationship, say something true. Oh, wait. So he said he was hopping on a plane? Yeah. So this is the first disagreement. The only time we've ever really disagreed. I have a mythology. We have a methodology disagreement as well.
Starting point is 00:17:54 But the only time Pace and I have ever directly disagreed is he was talking about speeding up stuff with title reps. I sent one text, and he blasted me online for – what was it? He was like, hey, good job using my brand to boost your following. I was like, oh, I felt like I had a legitimate claim there. Just a little note. I like Pace a lot. And Pace is smarter than me by a lot. Like he is a, you've had him on this podcast.
Starting point is 00:18:19 He's super intelligent. Super sharp. I'm not that smart. So I have to do things that are simpler and more stable. And I think in some ways that actually has built a better business. Subject to is a huge brand of his, and he can do everything by the way. I mean, he can do seller financing and do any sort of contract. He can do options. Guy's a genius. He branded really hard on subject to subject to has a fatal flaw. If you're getting started in real estate and you don't already have much money, which is you're going to create financial freedom through potentially
Starting point is 00:18:48 callable notes. Now, historically, this has worked really well because interest rates were low for a long time. You're not, as a bank, you're not going to look at a loan really close that someone did subject to at its 5%. By the way, subject to, for those who don't know, just means subject to the existing debt. So you leave the seller's debt in place. They keep paying their mortgage. You pay their mortgage for them. But their mortgage stays in place in their name, and you take title to the property.
Starting point is 00:19:16 The problem is there's due on sale clauses. A bank's never going to call that. If they have 5% interest and they're going to replace it at 3%, you're safe. So people have just loaded up on these and they've done very well. We're seeing a lot more of them get called now and it makes sense. All that 3% debt that makes your deal work, you're like, oh, I can just inherit their debt. A bank is going to look at that, they're going to call it, and they're going to replace that money at 7% or 8%. So the strategy of subject to, there's a place for it. Yeah. But making that a real estate strategy,
Starting point is 00:19:46 if you're trying to build your portfolio, I would avoid that like the plague right now. Yeah. And I think Pace would probably say the same, not avoid it like the plague, but Pace would definitely say like, it's not a strategy to build your entire portfolio. I think he would probably agree on that.
Starting point is 00:20:00 If you don't have a safety net to, if they call the loan or whatever to pay it, then it's risky. I could see why. Yeah. I think the difference between creative finance guys, agree on that if you don't have a safety net to if they call the loan or whatever to pay it then it's risky i could see why yeah i i think the difference between creative finance guys like us because again pace and i never had the chance to debate this mono a mono so i don't know what he disagrees and disagrees on the one thing that i'm really big on is the only underwriting that matters to me is how do i own it how do i lose it? I don't feel that subject to as a overall strategy answers the question for sure. How do I never lose it? You can pivot it, you can protect
Starting point is 00:20:31 it, but I just want to do simple things that are repeatable. If they're repeatable, they're scalable. And if it's scalable, that's the mark of any good business. So simple, repeatable, repeatable, scalable. That is what I am trying to build in real estate. I love that. What do you think about Dave Ramsey? Because he's got one of the biggest podcasts in the world right now. I love so much about what Dave's saying. I love the idea of debt-free. I'm going to go debt-free, which is crazy because I'm a creative finance guy, right? Oh, you are? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So here's the model. You have four phases in business. You have the build phase,
Starting point is 00:21:02 you have the stabilize phase, you have the optimize phase, and then you have the build phase. You have the stabilize phase. You have the optimize phase. And then you have the pay it all off phase. Here's my only problem with Dave. If you can make $700,000 a year or whatever he makes on his crazy successful podcast and his brand and his books. Yeah, whatever he makes. I have no idea what he makes. I was going to say $700 million. Yeah, way more than $700,000, you make hundreds of millions on your brand through
Starting point is 00:21:29 your lifetime. I think that was the last net worth number I heard him say was 700 million. If you can earn that crazy income, of course you don't need that. And I see the same thing with Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban's an anti-debt guy. It's like, Oh, of course you, he very early in his career had a huge exit for everyone else. I, I found that most of us need to lever to get somewhere. And if you can build enough cash flow, you buy, you stabilize, which gets to your cash flow goal. You optimize, which pushes that cash flow to the most it can be. And you, but I just interviewed all the most successful entrepreneurs that I could find. And they're not people that we both know. They're not celebrities. They're the people in every market. It's the mom and pop guy who's like, oh, yeah, I have 700 rentals in the city.
Starting point is 00:22:13 I talked to all of them. So many of them do not have debt. And when I'm like, why not? And how did you get there? They're like, I built, I built, I built. And at some point, I had enough. And I just paid it all off. And now I own it and I really
Starting point is 00:22:25 can't lose it unless I stop paying my taxes. It's just the best strategy. Is it the best tax strategy? Absolutely not. Yeah. But there's something to be said about owning your universe and you can do that without debt through real estate. You basically use debt to build enough cash flow to kill the debt. Yeah. I like that long term. I think his thing is he's teaching it to younger people and then it's hard to grow. Yeah. So that's where the debate is, I think. Yeah. Because he doesn't want any debt at all, even if you're in your college years and teenage years, 20s, whatever.
Starting point is 00:22:57 Yeah. And then at that point, like you said earlier, it's hard to grow, especially in real estate, if you don't have any debt. Yeah. No, real estate. Well, especially because real estate is so uniquely geared with things like seller finance or with other options that you can use, even the way you can leverage hard money. Sometimes you just find a great deal with a ton of cash flow that can support really high debt. I just bought a deal at 13.5% debt. It's only debt. And we bought it like 120ced like wow i got paid to buy the deal because we got an awesome price on an awesome project but there's all these different ways
Starting point is 00:23:30 in real estate where you can actually pick up an asset with a liability that is smaller than the asset that you're buying and you do that again and again and again you build net worth crazy fast it's just very unique but at some point if your goal is hey i you know i'd like to be worth 20 million, have a few hundred thousand dollar a year cash flow, a million dollar a year cash flow, you can build that. For a lot of people, that's enough. And when you've hit whatever enough is for you, I think it's a good time to pay it off. Because if you don't have all that debt, enough is now a lot more cash flow than what was enough. And you own it, and it's hard to lose.
Starting point is 00:24:04 So on a Dave Ramsey standpoint, I would say he's right on everything, except how to build there I don't think is feasible because we print money too fast. Agreed. Inflation runs way faster than wage increases. You just can't earn your way there unless you earn seven figures a year, which is not most people. Not most people at all.
Starting point is 00:24:22 Exactly. And you recently sold 55 units, right? Yeah, I've recently sold a units right uh yeah i've recently sold um i've recently sold a few i would be fine like i have more right now i have more real estate than i need for my goals i would be fine going down to 100 units and paying them off right now i have again it's in the 200s i'll still expand in new deals because i love the game but the things i'm trying to pay off is that first block of 100 units. So I will adjust my pieces however I need to, to own all of those debt
Starting point is 00:24:48 free. Because now I have a solid foundation of paid off cash flowing real estate to build the next block of real estate off of. So you hit a goal, form a new goal. Right. So you're just optimizing? Just optimizing, paying things down, trading pieces. I had two goals when I got started, by the way.
Starting point is 00:25:04 I wanted to retire my wife as a kindergarten teacher again washington state crazy politics yeah uh not fun especially during i was i was like okay my 10-year goal for retiring her became like a we're doing that this year like she's out she's a menace in kindergarten i imagine she deals with some then imagine that menace being only online for two years like it's like Good luck. She was in a super impoverished area too. So, I mean, she had a lot of families that had a lot of difficulty with internet. They have five siblings who are all on Zoom calls. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that was just not working.
Starting point is 00:25:37 So when we retired her from teaching, that was goal one. Then I've always wanted to build a house in Texas. And it's not like a ridiculous dream house, but it's a big house. Like the one thing I've always wanted to do. How many square feet are we talking not like a ridiculous dream house, but it's a big house. It's like the one thing I've always wanted to do. How many square feet are we talking? 4,000 square feet. Oh, that's not too big. Yeah, it's nothing lavish.
Starting point is 00:25:51 I live in a 1,300 square foot house just outside of Seattle. Damn. By the way, my Texas house costs like $100,000 more than it. It's almost the same price. Texas is awesome. Holy crap.
Starting point is 00:25:59 But I just wanted to have a bigger house. That is nice. And it is fairly decked out for what it is okay in this purchase that was all i've ever wanted to do the house is almost done now like it's framed i just did a walkthrough yeah they're starting to install the interiors now you need some new goals my man i know i'm like i'm like i'm right there so my first goal is okay get to like 100 units uh retire wife build the house i'm almost there so end this year, I'm going to be doing the part where I sit down and I'm like, we hit everything in my 10-year goal
Starting point is 00:26:29 and it'll take me about three years. We made millions of dollars, which is awesome. But the important thing to me is I'm like, I hit the things that I needed to hit. I'll do the part this year where I sit down. I'm like, okay, what's next? I'm 32 years old. I have a ton of time.
Starting point is 00:26:43 You could retire right now. I could, but that sounds so boring. It'd be boring. That sounds so boring. You would take years off your life going crazy, I think. Dude, people die so fast after they retire. No, there's little studies on this now. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:53 Yeah. I'm never going to retire. Yeah, I won't either. There's no way. As long as I love what I'm doing, which I love podcasting, I'm not going to retire. Yeah. Well, you've been immensely successful in a very short period of time. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Well, that's because money is not the first priority anymore. There we go. So I'm just being myself. Well, and that's – I think that's the main thing for everyone. I think that's – if there's one message out of this, I think that's what you need to focus on with goals is money doesn't matter after a certain point. There's a certain amount – everyone getting started for financial freedom, whether it's real estate or it's business or whatever it is. Financial freedom, you do have to take care of the money. Yeah. But once you own your time, that's where people typically start doing the most meaningful things in their life. Exactly. estate or it's business or whatever it is financial freedom you do have to take care of the money yeah
Starting point is 00:27:25 but once you own your time that's where people typically start doing the most meaningful things in their life exactly those first grinders survive anymore my survival is is covered my family is provided for the house is built i make enough to cover the house and the living expenses i'm like okay the real estate has covered me now i'm on on autopilot. What does my life need to be? For people who retire, they're like, my life needs to be golf and fishing. I'm like, they tend to die pretty quick. I can't live like that. That's what people don't see, though.
Starting point is 00:27:54 Those first X amount of years, for me, it was five, six years where you're just grinding 15 hours a day, giving up your social life, giving up drinking, partying in your 20s. And that is the discipline. I stopped drinking years ago. Projectivity through the roof. And I get more sleep without alcohol. Yeah. I don't know. I could see that.
Starting point is 00:28:13 Alcohol inhibits your sleep. So it does. I used to need a full like eight and a half hours of sleep. I feel just as rested as seven. I get a whole nother hour and a half of my workday. I'm not going to lie with the mouth tape I've been using. Shout out to hostage tape. I only need six and a half, seven hours.
Starting point is 00:28:26 Oh, there you go. Yeah. Anything you can do to increase sleep, by the way, like anything like sleep quality. Yep. You feel better. You're smarter. You're faster and you have more time. If you literally need less sleep, you get so much more time in the workday.
Starting point is 00:28:41 You wake up earlier, go to bed later. It's awesome. Yeah. I just bought this whoop to like optimize my sleep. Oh, there you go. Yeah. I want to get in the 90s. You wake up earlier, go to bed later. It's awesome. Yeah, I just bought this whoop to optimize my sleep. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I want to get in the 90s like Brian Johnson. He's averaging 100, man. Have you seen that dude?
Starting point is 00:28:51 No, I haven't. Brian Johnson? No, I haven't. This dude's a legend. He gets 100 every night. Dude, I have such a hermit. I know so... I'm on social media so little.
Starting point is 00:29:00 I only produce. Dude, that's impressive. For me, I have to be on it to find guests. You are in the industry. Yeah, it gets toxic though does it really yeah if you're just mindlessly scrolling it could get really really bad if you can avoid mindless scrolling and i i'm not against drinking i just don't drink yeah but if you can stop drinking for a couple years while you're in like the build phase and you can just lay off the tiktok and the instagram the amount that you can get done competing with other people is ridiculous especially if you're my age or younger the competition is squishy dude yeah it is a lot of people doing a lot of
Starting point is 00:29:35 nothing i can see that i don't know about the real estate space but in the podcast space i'm out working 99 of shows guaranteed and no one else is putting in the work. Not at our age. They only film once a week. I got nine episodes today. Dude, yeah. Right down the hall. You have a whole room of awesome guests. Good old work ethic, man. Dude.
Starting point is 00:29:55 And yeah, shout out to your podcast. I mean, you guys have stacked that room next door. Yeah. Crazy. But like you said, I'm not the smartest one. It's just like the work ethic and certain things. People don't need to be geniuses to make millions of dollars no being a genius would be nice and and i if you're a genius and you've been able to leverage that awesome like yeah like i want to plug this again like pace
Starting point is 00:30:15 smart guy not talking bad about him we may disagree on some things or we may brand on different things super smart guy and i think he's leveraged being super smart to the highest possible level for sure i mean incredible for for me it was like you know what i can do for sure i cannot work anyone i mean even like the ridiculous cult story i told at the beginning of this that's like nuts it's like i wasn't even sure that i was on board with that and i still was able to not talk to people for 100 days because i'm like, what if I should be doing that? It would be hard to outwork me because I'm like, I can just
Starting point is 00:30:50 do things. I can go days without food. I can go days without sleep if I need to. I'm the only one in my company who's like, we have 24 hours of work to do. I'm like, awesome. I will sleep tomorrow and it will be fine. I don't do that often, but I mean, I've done that multiple times here where it's like, we have to get this done. You guys go ahead and go to bed. This stuff will be done and I'll sleep tomorrow that often, but I mean, I've done that multiple times here where it's like we have to get this done You guys go ahead and go to bed
Starting point is 00:31:06 This stuff will be done and i'll sleep tomorrow. Yeah, that's discipline man. So not talking for 99 days. Were you hallucinating? Yes. Yes They limited the sleep to like four hours. Oh my gosh, there wasn't enough sleep. There wasn't enough calories I lost I lost 43 pounds in 30 days. Holy shit Yeah, that was that was what we call really bad. The bad happened fast. So people don't listen to this and go like, oh, this guy's just a crazy person, which may or may not be true. The descent into that was like normal, normal, normal, little bit weird, back to normal. It got weird fast.
Starting point is 00:31:40 It got weird fast, and then we got out. And how many people were with you? That was like a group. It was like seven people. Oh, that was like a group it was like seven people so it was low and everyone was weird and the three things that gets you into that by the way um this is sleep deprivation calorie deprivation and then isolation isolation is the big one when all of your inputs are one thing you're like i feel like this is insane but obviously i'm the crazy one because the other six people here are all totally on board and of course the other six people are are all totally on board. And of
Starting point is 00:32:05 course the other six people are all thinking the same thing. Yeah, that's crazy. Cults are crazy. Cults are gnarly. I'm watching a cult documentary on Netflix right now, actually. Dude, there are weird people end up in cults and then there's like normal people who get sucked into them. And it's two distinctly different personality types. But dude, the way that like programming stuff works is wild. I could see that, man. That is insane. So did you ever talk to any of those people again, the six people?
Starting point is 00:32:30 You know what's funny enough? I made peace with it really quick. I was like, that sucks. They suck. I don't need an apology. It's fine. It's one of those things where it's like, this could really bother me and define me. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:42 Even on a spirituality level. I'm like, this could define how I view God. Or I can just say these people were weirdos and move on. Right. I chose to do that. They did, two of them, actually the ringleader of the group and then one other guy actually called me years later and gave me like a full apology. Really?
Starting point is 00:32:58 Yeah. Surprisingly, pretty soothing. I was like, wow, that was actually kind of good on the soul. I didn't think I needed an apology. Turns out, still very helpful. But yeah, a couple people turned it around and were like, hey, this got weird and this was obviously very bad and I apologize.
Starting point is 00:33:14 I don't know what happened to anyone else. And they're like, we should meet up sometime. I'm like, absolutely. That will never happen for any reason. That's insane. I wonder why the cult leader came to his senses. I don't know. He was very cryptic on the call.
Starting point is 00:33:26 He's like, yeah, I've been going through some stuff. I'm like, I'm not going to ask. I'm not going to ask. I don't care. I'm not engaging. I'm like, thanks for the apology, dude. This was a little bit of therapy to get over. And yeah, no, I'm good.
Starting point is 00:33:39 You took away money. You took away speech. I have money. I'm a professional speaker now. So you were paying for that, too. No, they just drained all my bank accounts what which i had i got out of college was four thousand dollars so they drained a hundred percent of your money is a lot four thousand dollars fortunately is not so well it's all relative because at the time it was everything you had though it was everything i had and if i had money i would have been able
Starting point is 00:34:00 to fix the calorie deficit thing right uh i just had to eat food when... Damn, you were skin and bones. Oh, dude, it was terrible. That was a terrible thing. People shouldn't go through that. If anyone's listening to this, be like, I should go through something really intense. However, it is interesting as an entrepreneur, when stuff is stressful or hard,
Starting point is 00:34:15 I'm like, I have been through worse. I find most people who've been hyper successful have been through something ridiculous. 100%. The best stories are from people who are like, this was wild and it was intense and it defined my mindset. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:28 I think if you are an entrepreneur who hasn't failed at something yet or hasn't had some sort of trauma or chip on your shoulder, it's going to be harder for you to compete with some of the people who have. Not impossible, but... Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:34:40 Yeah. Christian, it's been fun getting to know your world, man. Anything you want to promote or close off with? Dude, we started a group, Multifamily Strategy. It's multifamilystrategy.com. When I learned how simple it was to do creative finance, not easy by any means, but simple, we started talking about this.
Starting point is 00:34:56 People started buying these in other markets. I got a friend, Caleb Hommel. We got another mentee recently, Logan Pritchett. These guys have 70-plus multifamily units. One of them is 22. One of them is 21. They did this in less than a year and they bought better deals than I did because they had a mentor to actually walk them through it. I had to figure it out on my own. I love this group. I am so passionate about it. I am the coach. Unlike all the online gurus,
Starting point is 00:35:18 there are a lot of them. I'm like, I will coach this till the day I die. It's always me. Multifamilystrategy.com if you want it for free. What a domain. Yeah, check it out on YouTube, by the way. Multifamilystrategy. You want like the free version of what I'm talking about? Follow me there. Cool, we'll link below. Thanks for coming on, man.
Starting point is 00:35:32 Thank you very much. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for watching, guys. See you next time.

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