Cody and Christian Osgood explain the "burn the ships" mindset: removing safety nets forces full commitment to real estate investing. Christian went from a 9-to-5 job to buying duplexes and a 38-unit property by eliminating his fallback options. Without an exit, you find better deals and stay engaged.
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Hey YouTube, this is Cody and I've got Christian back for this week's Corporate vs Entrepreneur. This week is a short video on a number one tip for squeezing time out of the equation from going where you're at to whatever you view success as, and it is burn the ships. What does that mean?
So I'll come at this with the W-2 perspective. I started with a 9-to-5 college route that's been This content of our last few videos is discussing the difference. What that allows is a certain safety net, which is great. It feels wonderful if stuff goes sideways while I still have my job. For me, I started with a duplex. I could afford to cover that mortgage if everything failed. The tenants left. I'm just losing that, that monthly income every month. I can afford to not lose the property. Property number 2, same thing. It added about a grand, grand and a half to my expenses. I can work my way through that. I'm not going to lose the property. I'll be okay. We're buying the 38 now. 38 units. Everyone leaves or stops paying. We lose about $12,000 a month. Add to that if the plumbing fails or there's a major disaster. I can't just go back to work and be like, oh darn, I guess I'll just pay it off myself. It has to work now. Which makes you find better deals, and it forces you to commit. Know your numbers, know your market, know yourself. That is why you need to burn the ships and don't give yourself a way back.
Yeah, and the ships really represent your out, your safety net. If you're going into a deal and you're like, oh, it can fail, then you're going to be less inclined to make that thing work. Whether it's a property, a business, a relationship, burn your exit. Make sure that you're 100% committed. Don't give yourself an out. And I've, I've shared this with folks who are considering college versus going out and trying to make a business or the entrepreneurship work for them. If you have a fallback of, oh, I can always go back to college or I can always go get a job, then you're going to be in the mindset of, well, it doesn't have to work. My very first property, I could not cash flow. My mortgage was about $90,000 a year, and so I could not afford that because I had never made $90,000 a year. So it had to work. I limited the amount of deals I could go buy because if I bought the wrong deal and it didn't go right, I would lose it. Now granted, the deal I bought could have gone wrong and I would have lost it during COVID Could have had an issue if people didn't pay. I was fortunate that didn't happen, but there was enough income to pay for the mortgage where I was less at risk because I bought right and I stayed within that parameter of I'm burning my exit, this has to work. So do you have any last things you want to share on that?
No, again, it's just find a deal that's worth committing to and don't back down. Don't let the size of the deal scare you. Don't give yourself an exit. You don't need a safety net if you know your deal.
Alrighty, so that is this week's video of Corporate vs. Entrepreneur. Let us know in the comments below what your thoughts are. If you've made it to the end of the video, let us know what market you're in, and we will personally help you find your first deal in that market. Till next time, it's today's video of Corporate vs. Entrepreneur.
