College or Self Education? Financial Independence Before 30

Hey YouTube, this is Cody. It has been a long time since I've created a YouTube video. I'm sitting here with my buddy Christian. He's my business partner, and we are going to take down 38 rental units here in the next month and a half. However, I'm creating this video today from completely different perspectives. He was the college route. He graduated. He was way smarter than I could ever be. He did the corporate route, and now being 29 years old, we're about in the same place with apartment units. And so we're going from corporate route, college dropout, and we just want to perform an unbiased opinion for you to make your decision what makes the most sense for you. So Christian, if you'd like to start, tell a little bit about your story.

Yeah, well Cody, thanks for having me on. Um, for me, I started, went to WSU, 4 years there, got a generic business degree in management and operations. Which is about as generic as you can get, a degree in absolutely nothing. Came out of that into a job that paid me a mighty $40,000 a year as a sales supervisor, company called SanMar in Issaquah. So I took 4 years of experience, about $50,000 in tuition, plus all the rent and food that you eat in college. It was a great time. However, leverage that into $40,000 a year, which gets heavily taxed, and You know, you start working your way up. Worked from there into a company called Land.com that was a land advertising startup. Started at the bottom there and worked my way to a senior account executive before that company got sold and I had to work my way from the bottom again. Then they terminated that team and I got hired back in the company in another position at the bottom again. And after about my 4th time working up companies, Finally did start making some real money a few years in. I was probably year 7 or 8 out of college. Worked my way up to about $200,000-$250,000 a year. I had the sports car, I had a house, I married an awesome wife who is far cooler than I am, and life's been good. The college degree helped get there. It helped start the path, and I'm sitting at about a half million dollar net worth after I bought my house, my first 2 rental properties, a duplex in Bremerton, Washington, and a duplex in the city of Moses Lake. And so that's how I got where I am. It worked. However, Cody did about the same thing and took him about, what, 8 years less?

But what's, what's the importance of your degree? I mean, how did that really help with job stability? What did that allow you to do that I can't go do right now?

It allowed me to apply conventionally and go into large corporate jobs with, hey, look at me, I look great on paper. I have some experience, I can sell, and I have a degree from a university that you recognize. It got me in the door at a few companies. It did help with active income a lot. It let me grow rapidly from $40,000 to $250,000 in an 8-year span.

All right, and then as far as my side of things go, very different switch from Christian. I've never made more money in my life, and as far as one year's paychecks go, than Christian has. Christian absolutely dwarfs my income, so I've had to take a little different approach. College is not for everybody. It wasn't for me. I could not sit in a classroom for 8 hours a day, or for college, 4 or 6 hours a day. And so I had to do a little different approach. I still to this day don't qualify for conventional financing. Christian has access to money at lower interest rates than I could ever get, and because of that, I've had to learn different models. And neither way may be better or worse, and so we're creating this video today to kind of share different obstacles you're gonna hit. For him, he worked at a job, he worked at CoStar making a quarter million dollars a year, yet at least he told me he hated it. Is that right?

Strongly dislikes.

Dislikes very strongly. And for me, I haven't had any job structure. I get to do as I want with my day. I get to control my time and my schedule, but I don't get to go to a bank and say, hey, I want a loan. Do 'cause they're gonna deny me all day long. And I've had to get a little bit creative. And the caveat to what he did, what I had to go do is I had to learn how to raise money and be very intentional with how I was figuring out deals 'cause I don't have access to buying every deal he can. He bought a couple duplexes that I would've loved to own, but they were great properties, great locations, great cash flow, yet I didn't qualify to go buy them. So I had to figure out how to do what's called seller financing. I had to get very creative with how I was coming up with money, and it limited me in my ability to go do specific deals. And I had to invest a lot of time and money in a different education than he did. And either way, we both are coming together. We're going to buy a 38-unit apartment complex together. We're closing in a month and a half. And so the real point of this video is to share with you guys that if you want to do it, whether you go the college route, whether you decide that's not for you and you don't go at all, or you drop out midway, you can make this work. What are the 3 things for your perspective that you need to focus on if you're going to do the corporate route? Like the 3 things you really need to hammer on to make it worthwhile spending $40,000-$50,000 to get a degree.

So if you're gonna go through and get a degree, you need to focus on, first of all, what is that degree going to do? What are you spending and what is your return gonna be? If you're gonna go to college to become an artist and you want to party for 4 years and get a degree that will make you $20,000 a year and spend $100,000 to do so, that might not be the best use of your time. You can be an artist and sell your stuff on Etsy and make more money than that instantly. The internet era, you don't need that. So know what you're going to do with it. When you get out there, know how to market yourself. Everything is sales, and they don't teach this in school, but the better you can market your degree and your skill set of, I have this degree and these skills and you need to hire me, You can get in and the door is always open. The third thing on the corporate route is just learn how to interview. It's not that hard to get in front of people. I have interviewed poorly before. I learned how to interview well and I got every job I ever asked for and some that I didn't. I've interviewed a lot of people who really do not know how to communicate. If you have a degree, learn how to communicate the value of that degree. Learn how to communicate the value of yourself, and it's going to open doors for you and let you move up the corporate ladder. I found myself capped at about $250,000 a year. I'm 29. I'm still learning the skills that Cody learned at 21 to scale up, because once you get your duplexes, if you don't have money, you're back to where where you were. If you spent your money on stuff, it's like, okay, how do I scale from here? Well, I have to learn how to get creative. I have to learn connections. The things Cody had to learn, you need to learn those whether you have a degree or not. I recommend doing it faster than 8 years. If you have those skills at 21, I'd be a heck of a lot farther.

And then if you're gonna play on this side of the field and you're not going to be buying, or you're not going to be going for that degree, you're not going to college and getting that formal education. Because some people look down on me for not having the formal education. They're like, well, you would interview better, or you would look better on a resume if you had this college degree. And honestly, if you're going for a certain position in a job and they think your resume matters, you didn't sell yourself well enough. So on this side of the space or spectrum, Focus on your presentation skills, focus on how you communicate. Back to what Christian said, communication is key. If you can present well, you know how to talk to people and convey your value regardless of whether you have a degree or not, regardless of whether you're younger than everyone else in the field or you're older than everyone else in the field. If you're an odd duck out, you need to show why you're special. And so that's skill number 1, learn how to talk to people and convey your value. Number 2, and also, I mean, these are all equally important, you need to get really good at the numbers. Numbers matter. Math doesn't lie. People lie, but math doesn't lie. So people may misrepresent numbers, but as long as you know how to do the math and you're operating ethically, it gets a lot easier to come up with capital. It gets a lot easier to figure out if something's gonna cash flow or not, if you're gonna make a profit every month. If you buy a whole bunch of cash flow negative real estate, you're not gonna be in business very long unless you have a super high earned income, which I don't. I don't have the corporate job, I don't have stability, so I don't have steady income. I may get a paycheck for $2,000 one month, zero the next month, and $20,000 the next month. I don't know. It comes down to sales. And so get really good at the numbers because it makes it easier to present to potential investors or figure out if the deal you're looking at is going to cash flow. And then number 3, focus on the deal. The deal is the most important piece, and by the deal I mean a property. Focus on the property that you want to buy. What's your buying criteria? What are you looking for? If you're buying real estate for passive income, focus on exactly, this is what I'm going to look for. If I find this, I'm going to buy it. That's when you know you can move fast. Certainty is the most important thing you're looking for. If you are certain this is a great deal, it's a great opportunity, you're not going to go back and forth when you find it. You're going to close on it, and it's going to put you one step closer from where you're at to where you want to be. So those are the 3 most important things on this spectrum. Get really good at communication, get good at the math, and then focus on the deal. Get certain about what you're looking for. And regardless of whether you want to go the corporate route like Christian did, you want to drop out of school or don't go to college, you should very much so go through at least high school. But if you're not going on to higher education, Focus on those 3 topics, and if you choose to go through college, make sure that you identify the value of that degree. Know what you're going for. And either way, whether you go through college or you don't, you can make this thing work. Because Christian, I don't think he mentioned it, but his real estate pays for his lifestyle. It pays for his house. He's got the car that he owns, that right? He doesn't have consumer debt.

There's just something to say for that too. I mean, there is a stability level that you have with, you know, you're going with the flow for the most part, right? If you get the degree and you get the job and you work for someone, it's predictable. If you save up and you buy the duplexes, the cash flow pays for the mortgage on my house. So my real estate pays for my real estate, which is pretty cool. And if you're just doing real estate to supplement your lifestyle, you can pick up a duplex here, a duplex here. The next year you pick up maybe a fourplex, an eightplex. You can scale and you can be successful and stable. It's not a bad way to go. If you want to scale beyond that, you're going to need skills that Cody has to learn, that I have to learn, that go beyond college. It works as a springboard. It can get you started. You can be stable there. But if you want to scale, you have to expand beyond what the degree can give you. And if I think there's any point here for me, I think that's the lesson here. Learn the skills early.

Yep. And so again, the choice is yours. You get to decide. Let me know in the comments if you or lead them one way or the other. Again, you can make either one work. Christian is living proof, and I'm living proof that whether you drop out of school or you go the corporate route, you can make this thing work. But from both sides of the spectrum, you have to be intentional about what you're doing. You need to make sure that the degree you're going for is going to help you out, and you know how to convey value whether you have the degree or not. So until next time, I will see you guys next week, and this channel is starting up officially today.