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Building Wealth through Creative Real Estate Solutions with Christian Osgood

• Ed Mathews

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Ed Mathews:

Greetings and salutations, real estate undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews with the Real Estate Underground. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today is a really interesting guest and I'm very excited to have him on the show Christian Osgood. I've been stalking him on YouTube for a whole bunch of time and if you haven't discovered him and you wanna get into learning how to invest in multifamily is his wheelhouse, but he's also done a bit in the hospitality space as well. I highly recommend we're going to get into it. But I highly recommend his YouTube page because I steal from him on a very regular basis. He doesn't know that, but now he does. Hey, Christian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming and it's good to see you, my friend.

Christian Osgood:

Hey, good to be here. Good to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, so for those of us out there that have discovered you, why don't you tell us a about who you are and what you do?

Christian Osgood:

My name is Christian. Started out investing in Washington State and started on the Dave Ramsey's method actually, while everyone's fourth, fifth job saved up to buy real estate, got a couple of duplexes, got to a cool place where my cashflow is paying for the mortgage on my house. So I got it to where it took me eight years for my real estate to pay for my real estate. It was like a house hack, but I didn't have neighbors. My tenants paid for my house. That's what I was able to put together.

Christian Osgood:

On the save up and buy properties method, there was a 19 year old in the office named Cody. I partnered with him on several deals in the past 19 year old kid never got a commission check. Like he'd made maybe $5,000 in his career and he had 30 rentals. And I was like how the heck did you do this? And I talked to a seller. I was going to try to broker the deal instead. He said why don't you just buy it? I said I don't have any money. He said, oh, if you can find 10% down, I'll sell it to you. So he got in by meeting an owner and the owner carried the contract and I was like that is very interesting.

Christian Osgood:

Fast forward years into the future. I have over 300 rentals between Washington State and Texas I've been buying primarily that was four years ago about my first significant multifamily deal 38 units and yeah, since then we expanded really quickly. I got unlimited by the amount of money that I have in my bank account. Focused on the opportunity instead, turns out this will be a theme, but it's much easier to align an opportunity to the money. You could tailor the money to the actual opportunity as opposed to tailoring an opportunity to the money. Or like you could tailor the money to the actual opportunity as opposed to tailoring an opportunity to the money that you're limited by be it yourself or raising capital before you invest. It's a lot easier if you have an opportunity. That's where the value is. Hey, what type of money you need? When I figured that like simple thing out, I went from four units to I, something like that.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and so give me a good way to grow. That is excellent, so give me an idea of the time frame that we're talking about here.

Christian Osgood:

So I bought my second duplex at the end of the beginning of 2021. So about one in 2021 and 2021 end of 2021. So this would have been December 2021. I bought a 38 unit building seller financed but they needed 15% down. I did not have $300,000 for the $2 million purchase. Didn't have any friends or family had money. But instead of focusing on that, I focused on we have an opportunity to buy 38 units in Washington state for $2 million. We can get this thing worth more than $3 million. I believe I can find $300,000 to make a million dollars. That just seems like something that's worth doing. I'm going to find it.

Christian Osgood:

So we went under contract for the deal. Appraisal came in 11 months later at $4.1 million, which is more than three. So we made $2.1 million on the first seller finance deal in equity paper money. But we dida cash out refi and bought out the partners. And so what I learned on that first transaction? The money, but we did a cash out refi and bought out the partners. And so what I learned on that first transaction? The real estate bought the real estate for me. No money left my pocket. My investors doubled their money. I bought them out for $600,000. I got paid an additional $350,000 and no money ever left my pocket. Today that's a deal I still own at. Cashflow is about $10,000. It's in conventional financing now because of the refinance. That one deal made me a millionaire in one shot. That was really fun.

Christian Osgood:

Simultaneously, two weeks after closing that, I bought a sixplex seller finance 10% down $900,000. Purchase 90 down. I raised the money from someone who I met in Starbucks two days after I went under contract. He was trying to double his money in five years and I was looking for cashflow at the time. So they cashflowed $1,000 a month. We got a good price on them. It wasn't an amazing price but it was better than market price for him. Yep. But we had strong cashflow, great seller finance terms and I ended up buying him out on the anniversary. I just bought him out.

Christian Osgood:

Actually, year four $180,000. Went back to him. He got bought out. Real estate bought the real estate. I got cash flow for a signature on both transactions. I increased my income immediately and then I let the real estate do what the real estate does. I ran it eventually pulled enough money out of it to buy it. It's basically the BRRRR strategy for you small multifamily people. Yeah, you go through, increase the value, pull some of the new value out, buy out the investor. You keep the cash flowing property. You own a hundred percent of the real estate with no money out of pocket. So it's like a magic trick, except it's like super repeatable and not that hard to do. I did it on the seven plex and eight plex, the 12 plex, in that year and then we went on to do a whole bunch of other deals all over the country.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, so let's talk about your process and, by the way, congratulations. No, thank you.

Christian Osgood:

I'm glad it worked. Yeah, me too, which was my first business idea, but it's the one that worked.

Ed Mathews:

We all have them.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, I'll take a diversion real quick. A buddy of mine he's in the venture capital world in Silicon Valley, a tech guy, and he told me once he said, look, I won't even invest with someone who hasn't what he called cycled Right, and what cycled means is bought a deal, screwed it up or for whatever reason it didn't work, landed that plane. However, that happened like whether you go out bankruptcy wise or you just shut the business down or something. But the key to that he's looking at is I want to know how that person handles adversity, not success Everybody can handle success Right but I want to understand how that person handled himself and handled the emotion and the difficulties of winding down a business. Once they do that and they do it successfully, and successfully means hey, you survived right the next business idea becomes a whole lot easier to invest because that's as bad as it's going to get. So it's interesting and I view frankly, I view mistakes and errors and things like that as an opportunity to learn, not as a you did a bad thing right.

Christian Osgood:

It's hard to compete with someone who's both won and lost how to navigate. I have a unique set of things. I'll save it for the final five. But my biggest mistake cost me about $1,150,000. That's expensive when the most you've ever made in your career is $250,000 in a like that. So I messed up at the cost of five years of the maximum I could earn before tax. That's uh. That's an expensive lesson. So as you navigate stuff, yeah, it's uh. No, I I couldn't agree more. I was an overnight success after eight years of trying exactly.

Ed Mathews:

it's interesting the, but the fact is that you're a lot smarter than you were that the before right, and I would submit that you've probably made that 1.8 or 1.150, not that you're counting 1.150 million back in spades, or at least you're well. I'm always interested in creative financing, so I'm here in the Northeast. A lot of your portfolio is in the Pacific Northwest, I would submit. They're similarly expensive markets in terms of per unit costs, but with that comes really strong cashflow from a rental perspective. And I'm curious about your process in terms of. Let's start with your buy box. What are you looking for in a building or in a property that kind of piques your interest? What are some of the facets of that deal that makes you start to pay attention?

Christian Osgood:

It's multifamily and I can acquire it in long-term cash flowing fixed rate debt If it's in a hub and geographically it has to be in an area where I can manage it. I don't want to build 15 multifamily businesses. I want to use the same resources across the portfolio. I own in Grand County, washington, mason County, washington, urath County, texas, and Houston, texas, but that's a growing market for me. I don't want to just buy everywhere all the time. So in an area where I already have resources it's multifamily, it's a big enough deal where it's still worth my time to travel to it. I believe in seeing your properties there's. You cannot just delegate everything to a manager and be successful. In my opinion and I also own my management companies, which is usually not the best thing to do, but it's worked well for me Building these things that I've just found that that's been a an easy way to call to never lose money. As you go in, you go. Okay, is it going to cash flow on long-term fixed rate debt? If the market changes, I still get paid. Nothing changes for me. I have a 100% market agnostic strategy. If it's a up market, a down market. But it pays me to buy it today and I can hold it. On long-term debt, it'll be worth more later. I call long-term 10 years or more, so I want a debt product that's at least 10 years. There's no point in history where the market has gone down on a 10-year average. It is always worth more. So buy deals that make sense today and then hold them forever and you will eventually become very wealthy in appreciation. You don't make it there if you don't get paid along the way. So cashflow.

Christian Osgood:

I've had a mentor. First one I had was terrible at business, now unbelievably bad at real estate. However, he was really good at creative finance and buying deals, so I learned a lot about how to structure deals, how to raise capital. The problem is he just lost his portfolio like two times over. County condos lost them all. Got into office, he overpaid but then got great terms. So he got deals that you can't get out of but they make sense because he got such low interest. And then COVID hit and so all of his income disappeared. But he stuck with a whole bunch of real estate he overpaid for. I learned a lot about watching him do that. I'm like, okay, if you can buy it all and then you can not lose it, you'll become very wealthy. You don't lose it. So that's all it is. For me, it's long-term cash flowing fixed rate debt. If I can buy it on those terms, which I always do, you don't lose the real estate.

Ed Mathews:

So let's talk about long-term debt. Are we talking agency debt or are we talking local banks?

Christian Osgood:

How do you typically finance your long-term 17 of my last 20 deals were seller financed on long-term notes.

Christian Osgood:

Oh wow I have. Last two ones were bank notes, both on 15-year terms. Those are just conventional Agency. I'll be using agency on the 76 unit that I'm going under contract for any day here. That'll be agency debt, which will be fun, but that'll be my first time actually getting an agency product. It's usually when I use a bank it's usually a local bank or credit union. They're regional banks that allow higher loan to values, which typically means if you're cash flowing with less money in, you typically have a much higher cash on cash return. So I liked having lower down deals. So it's the smaller local banks that usually have the most incentive to work with you. A lot of them will also allow you to blend seller financing with the bank debt, so you can have bank first, seller second, which allows again you to get a little bit more creative with how you get to cashflow.

Ed Mathews:

As long as their loan to value parameters aren't breached, most portfolio lenders don't really care too much about where you're getting the money right.

Christian Osgood:

Yeah, they're usually pretty indifferent. So you can get some banks. You can get 80, 90% financing. If you blend there in first, say, a bank does 50% and seller does 40, a lot of banks will go. They usually like to see 80%, but if our exposure in first position is only 50%, that's a really stable place to be as a lender. Right, they tend to get a little bit more flexible when you get creative on a deal if they have less exposure.

Ed Mathews:

All right. So let's talk about the seller financing Cause I think most of the folks here in the audience a lot of them do bank finance, debt and commercial lending type debt, bridge loans. How do you, when you acquire, when you go to acquire a property I want to get into how you're finding the properties, but let's talk about since we're on the financing piece, let's stay there for a minute. How do you broach the subject of seller financing with an owner I used to bring it up after.

Christian Osgood:

So the first thing, the most important thing actually, is you go through and you talk about the deal, first with a broker or an owner. If you open with hey, you opened a carrying contractor, you open seller financing or I'm looking for seller financing, you're basically saying, hello, I have no money and I want you to give me something to buy. Your deal Never going to work. You talk about the deal the way that it is. You're talking about an opportunity. The order goes deal, then debt, then equity. I don't need the debt product yet, I need to know what the deal is. So talk about the opportunity, talk about the price. You're basically trying to map the goalpost. If you imagine, as a soccer field, my goal is long-term cash flowing, fixed rate debt. I can't flex on those things. I need long-term cash flowing, fixed rate debt. I'm trying to figure out what they need. For the deal 25 unit building I bought in Stephenville $2 million. For the deal 25 unit building, I bought in Stephenville $2 million, 5% interest. He was willing to carry a 85% loan to value, which is great. On that particular, I actually think he carried a little bit more than that. It ended up being like 87%, but you get the point Low down seller financed. Problem is his rents were 50% of market. So I came into that deal. I mapped out the pieces. He needs $2 million Great price for 25 large units, newer build in Stephenville, texas. That's a great price. Yep, 5% interest is way better than market interest. We have great price and great terms. His rents are 550 when market rent is a thousand. It's still bleeds money. So I can't. My goal is not met that particular one, since that's where the goalposts were. We did a reverse AM, we just did hey, my payments are going to be three and a half percent. You're going to add to the principal for the first two years and then I'll easily be able to afford 5% out of cashflow. I added $50,000 to my principal. I still bought it for 400,000 less dollars than it was worth and we always cash flow.

Christian Osgood:

So how we're getting the deals and how we're structuring them is your only focus when you're talking about it isn't bringing up seller financing. It's not figuring out if they're open to it. You map the pieces and you go oh, I see what would make this deal work. Then you just propose that I don't use the word seller finance or finance anymore. I just say, hey, I can take this to a bank and this is probably how the bank's going to look at it. Or, if you're open to it, I'll put this much down and I'll pay you this much per month for the next five years and then I'll pay you the remainder.

Christian Osgood:

I just explain what it is. It's a lot easier to wrap your head around it, even if you're a sophisticated investor, when you tell me, hey, would you sell or finance if I put $200,000 down? Or if you said I'll give you $200,000 right now, I'll pay you 6%, which is X amount of payments every single month for the next five years, and then I will refinance and pay the balance. You're saying, okay, can I give you two things? Can I give you a down payment and can I give you payments? As opposed to, will you give me financing psychologically much easier.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and I would submit you're giving them a third person, a third thing too, and that is their price, right yeah?

Christian Osgood:

You try to say yes to everything that they want and if you can't like my example the 25 unit I'm like I can't give you 5%. I found a way to say yes to 5% anyway. I can give you $2 million and I can give you 5%. This is what it's going to look like. The payments are going to be a little bit lower in the beginning because I can't dip negative, but you will get all of that money. Some of that money is going to come later at the refinance, so we're going to add it to the principal balance.

Christian Osgood:

I'm not advocating for reverse AM being your main strategy. That's often that's a stupid idea. It was perfect for this one deal. So the answer to creative finance is you look at the pieces which is why you always map the pieces first and you just say what is the simplest way to make sure this deal cash flows and that I can hold it forever? If you can answer the two questions, how do I buy it? How do I never lose it? That sounds an awful lot like buy and then hold. If that is the goal, that's, all you need to do is go. How do I say yes to everything they want, say yes to everything I need and do it in a way where everyone wins. I've never had a seller have any problem with me ever, because they got 100% of what they wanted and I got 100% of what I wanted. That was an easy solution, like many deals are.

Christian Osgood:

I had a mentee go through one of our programs. His name's Caleb. He's become a very dear friend of mine. We call this move the homel hack. He had a deal that needed money to renovate. He did not raise the money up front, which is what you should have done but he went I can cash flow it if I don't have to pay a mortgage for six months. So he said I'm going to give you a down payment, I'm going to give you your price, I'm going to give you your terms, I'm going to give you your interest rate, I'm going to give you the balloon, I'm going to pay you the down payment and then my payments to you are going to start six months in the future. They're not going to accrue, they're not going to, they're just that's when the payments start.

Christian Osgood:

Super simple solution. He was able to cash flow through his first few months bank all the rents for the most part, use them to renovate the units. He filled the units. Now he was able to. He came up with a business plan and it was the littlest tweak. It was everything is perfect. If I just had six months, this deal would work. So he asked for six months. Find the simplest solution to the problem. Propose it Basically. No one else is doing that. There's no one else, I guarantee you. No one else proposed what if I don't pay you for six months after the down payment? That's all he needed to close his first deal. That's how simple these things are. When you propose something that hits all of their objectives, you get a yes every time.

Ed Mathews:

I have two additional questions and then I want to get into the final five. First one is with regard to how you're finding deals. Yes, what's what is the top two or three ways that you're locating these kind of deals?

Christian Osgood:

I only have two ways. I go to Google Maps and I look up the partial map. So I look for roofs. I look in residential areas and like that's a big roof, that's either a huge mansion or it's a multifamily building. Usually it's a multifamily building. You can go to Street View and you can look at the front doors. You're like, ah, there we are. Because of city zoning codes, you typically have multifamily buildings next to multifamily buildings. They're usually in the same area, so you find a few. The other buildings, like it, are usually in that area. There's going to be a few pockets in town that are zoned that way. So you go through, you map out okay, what are the buildings that I am really interested in, the type of building that I'm interested in owning.

Christian Osgood:

Then you go to a parcel map or GIS data. There's different names for it, but every county. You can click on a map and it shows here's the acreage, the parcel number, who owns it. It's like, wait a second, who owns it? It's public, yes, it is. It's either going to be someone's name you can Google their name and the city and the word phone number and phone numbers appear. It's like magic. Or if it's an LLC, you can go to a free site like Open Corporates or True People Search, plug it in, figure out who owns the LLC and then same exact process.

Christian Osgood:

If you were trying to do a thousand calls a day, that would be horrendously arduous. If you're like me and you call two people a day, that's no work. That takes literally like two seconds. Hop online, click on property, call person. I don't even care if they answer or not. I make 10 calls On average. That means I book one coffee meeting. I meet an owner in my market every single week. 52 owners meet with me every single year. If 52 people know you like you trust you have a relationship with you in the market that you're buying in. I promise you will buy real estate if you do nothing else. And it only costs you coffee. So I'm highly caffeinated. That's a great deal. Great deal, not a sales job. So that's number one.

Christian Osgood:

Number two just go to Crexie and call brokers who list the type of properties you want to list, not just to buy the property, but analyze the deal with them. Ask good questions, network with brokers on market listings. What you're going to find is they also tend to list new stuff. You make some friends. Just form real relationships.

Christian Osgood:

I have brokers who like working with me and I do submit offers on their stuff. And as you start submitting more offers, guess who they think of first when they have a deal that's like the one they just sold. Oh, the guy who's actually submitted an offer, even if it wasn't an offer that got accepted. If you're like, hey, I can't offer on the deal I found online, doesn't matter at all, there I go. They're firm on the price of 5.5 million. I'm like it's worth 1.2. I can't do more than that. Is it worth writing an offer? They're like let's get an offer in front of them Now. We've written an offer. It didn't get accepted. I'm now one of the people on the very top of their list because I had legitimately tried to put together a deal. The next time they have a 15 unit building that's priced reasonably, I'm going to be one of their first two calls. That's the only way I've ever found deals.

Christian Osgood:

I've still never asked anyone to sell a property to me. It's always been a proposal. A broker's call me saying, hey, I have a deal for you. Or, more often, an owner calls and says, hey, I have a deal for you. Or, more often, an owner calls and says hey, I have a buddy who's selling a property. I think this is a good fit for you, based on what I know about you, cause we've actually met. They know I don't have a lot of money like in cash on hand. When I started I had none. They're like okay, I know you're, I know you're tight on cash. I know you're trying to get into bigger buildings. This building is too small for me to acquire where I'm at today. It's perfect for you. It's 12 units. It's on the street. I've already talked to them. They are open to carrying a contract. They do want to see your business plan for the property Done.

Ed Mathews:

Perfectly reasonable. Second question, and then we're going to hop into the final five how do you get brokers to buy in? Because obviously time is their most valuable asset and the way they convert time is through commissions. When you go into a situation where you are stacking financings let's say 50% I'll use your example from before 50% is a local bank, 40% is the seller or the owner of the property, so that's a 10% down. So I would imagine 3% to 6% of that would go to the realtor, which brings down the amount of money that's going into the owner's pocket right out of the box. So how do you navigate that?

Christian Osgood:

So, when it comes to brokers, the seller financing the brokers usually pay it on the seller's end, so they're usually paid out of the down payment regardless. So that's just going to be, whatever the deal is, what the deal is. If it's 20% down, the broker should get in the 3%. If it's 10% down, the broker should get in the 3%. The only time it becomes a problem is when you do a zero down deal. I've done 100% seller finance deal. Now I have to cover all closing costs, but we had a listing broker on this.

Christian Osgood:

How's the broker get paid? It's a rare occasion and of course, course, the brokers. How am I getting paid? I'm not going to let a broker fee blow up a fantastic deal. If I'm going to make a million dollars and the broker is going to make, you know, $15,000 on a sale, yeah, we're going to go ahead and pay the broker fee. That's how you get around that. If a broker is like how am I getting paid on a seller finance deal, the same way you always get paid. Unless there's not, you getting paid is not the issue. We will figure out the payments. Good brokers never bring that up. They understand. I have a contract to be paid. This much. I'm going to get the deal done. They're salespeople, they're good to go. If they need a reassurance, you can just tell them don't worry about your commission, it's 3%. I'm worried about the other 97% of the deal that I'm about to own the 3% If the broker fee blows up your deal. You already have a bad deal. Yeah, don't do it.

Ed Mathews:

Fair point, all right. Hey, let's get into the final five. I'm always interested in what motivates people, especially people as successful as you Tell me, finish the sentence for me, my purpose is the funny thing is it does change over time.

Christian Osgood:

as you achieve one goal, your purpose also grows. But my primary purpose I think my primary purpose is to provide for my wife and kid. That's my number one highest motivator. I grew up. My dad did an amazing job. It's lower middle class family. I live in a really good area though my mom got to be a stay-at-home mom, got to stay at home and raise us Single income family and we were able to make it in the Seattle area, which was expensive area, to live the trade.

Christian Osgood:

My dad didn't get a lot of time with us until he retired at 62. I did not get significant time with my dad. He had a two hour commute to work, two hour back and he worked an average of about a nine hour day. So 11 hours out of the day he's gone and by the time he gets home he's exhausted. So did not get a lot of quality time with my dad growing up because he did a great job providing. So my primary motivator is provide for my family like my father provided for us, or better, and have time to spend with my family. It's cool, we're in my home office, so downstairs my wife I could hear through the walls. My wife is playing with my two and a half month year old son, and that is my primary purpose. Secondary purpose is I want to help.

Ed Mathews:

as many people do this as seemingly possible those are really good reasons to get out of bed on Monday morning. Oh yes, is your dad still with us? Yes, he is so good, so you get to spend time with him, which is now, which is even better, right? Yes, yes, it is. Yeah, hats off. Your dad did a good job. So did your mom. Speaking of mentors and people that are important to you, I'm always fascinated by the advice that people get, and so I'm curious about when you're professional or personal travails what is the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you? Or personal travails what is the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you?

Christian Osgood:

Best advice I ever got and I got it a little bit later than I wish I did is don't add steps. It was given to me by, funny enough, the worst mentor I've ever had. He's the one who keeps losing his portfolio, but he had some stuff that was just gold. It's just. The guy was an idiot and had no ethics. It was an interesting blend. An interesting blend. You can learn amazing things from bad people. I learned a lot of great things from him. One of the things that I learned that was great he had a simplicity about how he went about business, which was what is the goal? What steps do we need to get to the goal? Let's only do those steps. You don't skip steps, but you don't add any. So, like a lot of people a great example.

Christian Osgood:

A lot of people go I want to be an investor, so I'm going to go get my broker's license. If you write out the steps to become an investor, becoming a broker is not one of those steps, but people do it because we want to add qualifications. We went from first grade to second grade, to get to third grade, to get to middle school, high school, college, whatever we're trained that, we need to qualify ourselves. This isn't a job. You're an entrepreneur. Your job is to, as efficiently as possible, achieve the goal. If the goal is to own real estate, what is the most effective way to do that? Learn how to analyze the deal and get around people doing deals. That's the answer. Buy a property would be how you become an investor. In fact, that's the only way to become an investor. So that was the best piece of advice I ever got. I could have skipped the eight years and gotten directly to the buy real estate stage if I had heard that before.

Christian Osgood:

Number one piece of advice don't add steps.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and it's so interesting, and I'm guilty of it myself Entrepreneurs, a lot of us are creatives, right In terms of the way our brains work, and so adding complexity is one of the things the albatrosses that we all have to navigate. And when you said that piece of advice, I wrote it down on my notepad here. I'm going to use that as a mantra going forward. So, thank you for that.

Christian Osgood:

I know we're enlightening around so I'll keep the story super short, because I love telling stories, but they're one of my favorite marketers of all time. I love them or hate them. Ryan Reynolds owns a marketing company and their superpower is they can go from concepts to deliver product in about 48 hours so they can see a hit commercial. It's a sales and marketing company. You can see a hit commercial. They can hire the staff, write the script, produce an episode and have it out to the networks almost immediately for any product. So there's this peloton ad that went out and the actress in it was. They just ended this story. They go back to the house. The peloton's not in there, but it's the same cast. It feels like a continuation of this ad another company spent a bajillion dollars on.

Christian Osgood:

If you don't add steps, you get really efficient. It cuts down your time immensely from idea to product and every. I have multiple companies that I'm involved in. That has always been our super powers that we can have a business idea and I can usually monetize it within 24 hours. I'm like I have a concept. I think someone will buy this before we even produce the product. Let's sell it to someone to make sure that we have the model and then let's go ahead and build it so that we can deliver it to them. I've done that so many times and the ability to do that in real estate or in business. I've made millions of dollars doing that and it all stems from don't add steps. Sorry, lightning round. I know no more stories. That was the one.

Ed Mathews:

And, if memory serves, that was the Peloton commercial during COVID and the husband gives his wife a Peloton and then Peloton took a basting, because the way that most people perceive that commercial is the husband was telling his wife that she's fat, she needs to work out, when she was this like beautiful, healthy person, and and and then if, if I'm remembering this correctly, so Reynolds ad agency or media company followed up that story and she had kicked the husband to the curb right Because she did now, celebrating with aviation gin and it's just the ability to watch the.

Christian Osgood:

So that was one. That was just one I took a lot of inspiration from, but there was watching that being like. They saw that they went, wow. I wonder if someone could create a continuation of this storyline. Wait a second, that would sell our product.

Christian Osgood:

Do you know what's funny, the most watched Instagram short I have. It has nothing to do with real estate, which is a huge bummer, but I just had this idea during the Mike Tyson fight. When you see him walking with his jockstrap, when they showed his butt on TV, everyone's posting this thing and I immediately, my first time I saw that, I immediately thought of Ant-Man. I'm like that's America's ass, that thing. I was like I can't believe no one's posted this yet. And then I was like wait a second, I can post things. The first one, the first Instagram reel I've ever posted. They got 2.2 million views and it's only because it's just the first one to think about it. And the time to see it and post it was like probably three minutes after it went live. Yeah, I was the most watched hashtag for Mike Tyson, for two hours it's At least that's wonderful.

Christian Osgood:

Yeah, don't add Granted. That added no value to me and none of those followers will ever buy anything from me because it's unrelated. But it's a good example of I had an idea. It got a ton of attention only because we launched it before everyone else. We didn't get bogged down with other steps. It was just like oh, this is a good idea, stitch these two things together, done.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, newsjacking is what you're talking about, and it's a very powerful concept, right, it is, especially if you can move as fast as you just described. Yeah, three minutes is ideal, exactly so. I'm always interested in learning how leaders like yourself sharpen the saw, so to speak. And readers or, excuse me, leaders tend to be readers, and so I'm curious who do you pay attention to? What book, virtual or otherwise, is sitting on your nightstand these days, and who are you paying attention to?

Christian Osgood:

There's three books. Number one hands down favorite book of all time called bible good one bestseller highly recommend that. One's always on my nightstand. That's the basis for everything outside of that. Like tactical sales books. There's two and I found that the communication skills and sales negotiation are the most powerful business tools anyone can have, regardless of what you're in whether you're actually in sales or marketing or not your ability to navigate and direct is huge.

Christian Osgood:

Never split the difference by chris foss fantastic book and straight line method by jordan belfort. That one you have to listen to it on audiobook because there's a big section on tonality. That's super helpful. It is really hard to read about tonality. You need to do it on the audiobook, I actually. So you can fun hack. You can read faster if you have the physical book and the audiobook. If you listen and read at the same time, you can go way faster and you retain astronomically more that if you have just those two books. You you can basically sell anything, move any piece of product and negotiate. Never Split the Difference is very much the basis of map out every side's objectives and get to a 100% yes for everyone. It is negotiating win-wins where you give exactly nothing. That is a lot of creative finance that one translates into real estate like no other, translates into real estate like no other.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, indeed, and it's one of my favorite books.

Christian Osgood:

So good, although I haven't read Jordan Belfort's book, so I'm going to be picking that one up soon. It is. It is the best book on sales and, funny enough, straight line method. What did I just share? Don't add steps. It is yeah.

Christian Osgood:

Yeah, that's been the basis of a lot of my stuff. Like how do you, how do you write a good script? Why do you write a good script? My favorite quote from that book no one likes scripts and you don't read the script exactly. It's a conversation. Everything should be organic. Great actors are great actors because they know the script so well that they can go off script and they can dance back and forth with the script. They can interpret the script because they know where they're going. Creating that straight line that is your roadmap for conversations. My group Multifamily Strategy that's a lot of what we talk about in scripting is these conversations. There are actual literal straight line points that you touch and your ability to dance along those and keep the conversation moving in order dictates your success. So that's, yeah, the great book. You'll love it.

Ed Mathews:

I can't wait, I'll be. I'll be hopping on audible as soon as we hang up here. Good, so last question for the final five what does success mean to you?

Christian Osgood:

What does success mean? Success to me? It's funny Cause I get asked that question a lot and it changes, like every time. So I'm like I literally have a canned answer for this and I'm questioning my canned answer.

Christian Osgood:

Success for me is that you move significantly forward. It used to be like literal success. I had an idea and it went to plan. Or like when you get started and you don't have any money, when you have ideas that make money, it was easy to be like I want to be a millionaire. So when I made my first million dollars, that felt successful. But success is significantly moving forward. Every time you do anything.

Christian Osgood:

I've had deals where I've lost it. The deal didn't lose a million dollars, but it cost me a million dollars when it was supposed to be zero down. That's expensive. Still made money. It increased my net worth but it didn't work the way it was supposed to.

Christian Osgood:

And when you don't have any money and you need to pay, you imminently need to pay a million dollars and you've never made that much before. Pretty stressful. So success to me in that instance was I can get bogged down and really stressed about I've never made a million dollars before. Or let's focus on what things could I do in the 10 month period I have to, where a million dollars is no longer scary. What things can I do with my current set of skills that allow us to scale beyond that? And so that's where success is for me, and I'm trying my best to articulate this while I'm thinking about it, but it's taking every scenario and becoming better and stronger for it.

Christian Osgood:

I didn't know how to make a million dollars, but it got a lot less scary when I built a business that makes more than $2 million and I was like, oh, I solved it with a check because I didn't focus on making a million dollars, I focused on making five and I failed and I made two. I still solved my problem and I had a million dollars of cash which bought me a really cool house. Like that's a good example of I technically failed my goal, but I definitely moved forward and I overcame adversity. That's a successful outcome. So that's what good example of I technically failed my goal, but I definitely moved forward and I overcame adversity. That's a successful outcome. So that's what success is. It's being farther than you were before you started Right.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, always advance the ball. Yes, I could have just said that would have been better Straight line. You're not talking about real estate and doing deals. What do you like to do for fun?

Christian Osgood:

For the past three, four years. All lame answer, but all I do, for I love real estate. I love real estate. I really have enjoyed the community that we built around it. So I know this sounds corny, with, like multifamily strategy being my core product the mentorship, the community, the coaching but actually getting to be a part of that, to host events, to get to travel and speak it takes all of my time and I wouldn't do anything else.

Christian Osgood:

I'm a really obsessive person. That's why I can't play video games, because I know it would take all my time. I have to compete and I have to push to be when something's not as good as it can be. I'm a hyper-perfectionist. Having a project where this is something that I can put infinite energy into and it can never be perfect, it can just keep getting better. I am so passionate about that that is, a majority of my time is spent on how do I grow this community. How do we increase the success rate of students? My target is right now I have 50 people. I try to cap it to about 50 people. We're pretty much full like 48. But how do I get these 48 people to? 100% of them buy a deal within the next six months, multifamily more than five units. Most of them will be less than 50 units. But it's like, how do we get 100% success rate? That is the current challenge. But that stuff I just from the time I wake up to, usually about one in the morning. That's pretty much what I'm doing.

Ed Mathews:

It's interesting, the usage rate of training and things like that is usually about five to 7%. I don't know if you knew that. So, really, yeah, and here's why the way the human brain works when you go buy the book or you buy the training, you already get the dopamine hit that you're looking for. So your brain thinks I've already accomplished what I set out to do, but you didn't Right. And so that's why so many people, when they buy books, they sit on a in a bookcase never opened. It's why, when you look at training statistics, yeah, about 5% of the people actually follow through on the training, which is insane. That makes me very happy. I have we about 5% of the people actually follow through on the training, which is insane.

Christian Osgood:

That makes me very happy. We have over 50% of my students have bought a deal within the first six months, which is very good, and yeah, I hate anyone who doesn't, though I really want to get that number up.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, but your heart's in the right place and the fact that you strive for 100% really says something about your character and also, frankly, your community is lucky to have you. Oh, thank you.

Christian Osgood:

If I have my friend Caleb he started with. He was they started like 18. He had no money. His sales skills were. I didn't know there was a level negative one until I met Caleb Never had a job. He's the least qualified person to of all time. He just closed on a. He's at 109 rental units right now. He just he turns 22 tomorrow actually, so still 21. I look at, whenever I look at it, I'm like there's no one I've ever met who is less likely to have succeeded than him. So everyone else in the group is more qualified to buy real estate, so everyone should be able to do it. That's how I look at it. I mean it is possible to get a hundred percent%. We just need to get everyone there. So it's a fun challenge and I'll never hit it. You'll never have 100% success, there's no way, but we'll keep shooting for it.

Christian Osgood:

Yeah.

Ed Mathews:

You're already tenfold what the industry provides. There we go. I'm not.

Christian Osgood:

That's a soundbite post. That's testimonial.

Ed Mathews:

So if people want to learn more about multifamily strategy or Kensho property management or your investment company or just you know, pick up the phone and say hey, I'm in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and I want to buy you a cup of coffee. Yeah, if you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Christian Osgood:

My property management company down here is Apex Asset Management Kensho. I actually recently seller financed to someone. Funny enough but Apex Asset Management DFW all the way down to Waco. So anywhere recently sell our finance to someone. Funny enough but apex asset management dfw all the way down to waco, so anywhere down to 35 you can go to apex amcom.

Christian Osgood:

The youtube channel, multifamily strategy a little over 100 000 subs. You guys are more than invited to that. That's completely free. Information is free, by the way, anyone who's selling you an online course that's what it is. Just go to youtube, seriously, it's easy. I have a course that goes with the mentorship. That's what it is. Just go to YouTube, seriously, it's easy. I have a course that goes with the mentorship. That's on demand, which is great 250 videos, you can check it out.

Christian Osgood:

But if you want a community, you want coaching, if you want to plug into a system, if you've done the YouTube thing, you've read some books and you're like, wow, bigger pockets, I've seen a hundred episodes, but I have not bought a hundred units If you want to jump into a system, that's what multifamily strategy is, and I run webinars. Usually every Wednesday. I'm on the YouTube channel. I'm always linking stuff, so if you want to get in, you don't need to spend $8,000. Check out the channel, check out some of the things and if you're like this is the community, I want to jump into multifamily strategy. You guys can always reach out and book Paul with my team All right, happy to hang out.

Ed Mathews:

Excellent, Christian Osgood, congratulations on your success, good fortune and thank you for joining us today. I got a lot out of this. I've been jotting notes as we've been sitting here talking, which is not always the case with my guests. Thank you for your time today.

Christian Osgood:

Thank you so much.

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