Cody grew a $23 million multifamily portfolio starting with $3,000 by mastering a three-part story: where he came from, where he's going, and what changes when he gets there. He shares deals he closed using this method, including a 12-plex from cold calls and a resort bought for zero down, and shows how telling your story creates the rapport and trust needed to unlock financing.
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Now everybody knows their story, but very few people know how to present it and get it to be received from everyone who's listening. Hey YouTube, my name is Cody, and today we're talking about crafting and sharing your story specifically in relation to growing your portfolio. When I got started, I had $3,000, I had no real estate and no family or friends in the real estate business. Over the past 4 years, I've grown the $3,000 and no relationships into a little over $23 million of real estate consisting of apartment complexes, development sites, and most recently, the Robin Hood Village Resort over in Union. I've done this with no money, no relationships starting out, and no help from family or friends. And everybody can do that, but it revolves around your ability to figure out your story. Now, everybody knows their story, but very few people know how to present it and get it to be received from everyone who's listening. When you're crafting this out, we have a little circle drill, and this is so vital. We're going to share how this actually got me from $0 to $23 million of real estate. But there's 3 sectors, and if you're mapping this out on a little piece of paper, you've got relatable points, you've got goals, and then you've got significance. And if you think about it, your relatable points— people relate to you based on where you're coming from. They're going to relate to you based on the things that you've done in your past. So in one sector, in the first starting sector, you've got where you're coming from. Your goals are where you're going. And where you're going will get people to want to work with you. And then the last piece is significance. Now, this is not your why, but what this is, is what changes for you when you hit your goals. So when you're mapping out your story, you put everything that you've been through, where you want to go, what you want to do, what changes for you when you get there. When you go out and meet with people, we talk about going out, meeting with real estate investors, learning how they got to where they're at, going through their whole story. You get to share yours. And when you share your relatable points, that will get you in the room with these people. When I got started, what I did was I was sharing where I was coming from. I was calling people on Google Maps and my first deal was on the MLS forever. But when I started reaching out to people, it was off-market opportunities. I was finding people on Google Maps, cold calling them. We have a video, How to Find Any Property Owner's Contact Info Ever. It's on our channel. It's one of our most popular videos. Check it out. But I called them up and I had to share a relatable point because relatable points will get you to the table. They'll get you into the room. People will meet with you based on their relationship and their ability to relate to you over that quick phone call. When you get to that meeting, I drove 3 hours to Moses Lake to meet with someone who owned a 12-plex. And I had to share a goal. I want to be able to get to X amount of units. And that's going to be a different number. X is different for everybody. But what really matters, they'll get to work with you based on the goals that you share. What really matters is what changes for you when you get there. And when I started meeting with these owners, I was letting them know, when I get to this amount of units, I'll be able to take care of my mom, take care of myself, take care of my family. They've never done anything like this in the real estate space. And I want to be able to help them out. That significance piece, what changes for you when you get there, creates buy-in, and that buy-in creates the opportunity. That's what people miss. So I'd be reaching out to all these people. So I started with 12-plex that was on the MLS. Cold-called someone I found on Google Maps. They had a big roof. It was 2 side-by-side 6s, which made up a 12-plex. They told me I need to put a new roof on it someday. I did that later. But I'd called them up, drove 3 hours, met with them for a few minutes. Drove 3 hours back, started building that relationship with him, calling him, letting him know what I was working on. He offered to seller finance it to me. And in that process, I found the deal. Now I had a big portion of the debt, had to find a little bit of equity. And so that's how we structured our whole deal, debt equity. But my point in this is I would never have had that had I not reached out, tried to share a relatable point to get to the table, share my goals and what changes for me when I get there. So as you try and build out your portfolio, whether it's a 12-plex, a duplex, 100-unit complex, a resort, you have to map these 3 things out. It is vital in order to build a relationship because ultimately the number 1 way to build a relationship once you get to the table is share goals that they can resonate with because that'll get them to want to work with you. Let them know what happens when you hit your goals and make sure to follow up as you start to hit your goals because everybody forgets this piece. That one gentleman ended up selling me another property, and then he sold me another property. He introduced me to more people who sold me more properties. I was able to scale from one 12 to another 12 to a 6. I met Christian, and you can check out where we started working together on this channel. We bought a 38-plex, and the rest is history. We've repeated this process. If you map out your circle drill, you map out those 3 sectors, you start sharing it with people who have done what you want to do, you can scale from any dollar amount, whether you have negative money right now, you're living off of a credit card, there's ways out of that too. If you maybe got $100 grand in the bank and you're trying to figure out where do you put it, how do you get into real estate, you got to go meet with the players in the space who have done what you want to do in the market that you want to do it in. If you want to buy a duplex, go meet with people that bought duplexes, map out the circle drill, share it with them, and then map out theirs. And when you relate, when you can resonate on those goals and what changes for you when you hit those goals, That will create the buy-in you need to scale up. Now, as Christian and I started to scale, we bought a resort. We bought it zero money down. This was a complete deviation, and you can check this out on our channel because we've been posting every step of the way through our journey. The resort was the single biggest purchase we've ever made, shy of the deal we're under contract on now. More details coming soon. We bought that deal exactly the same way as we bought everything else. We drove over, we met with the owner. We mapped out where we were coming from, relatable points, mapped out some of our goals for the portfolio, what we were trying to do, and what changes for us when we hit those goals. And we did the same exact thing for them, learned about their journey. This built what's called rapport. Rapport is not built by just going back and forth trying to share relatable points. It is, it's really built off the fact that you both have goals that resonate with each other and you know what changes or changed when you hit those goals. That's where you should focus. Don't focus on the past, all the relatable points. Focus on where you both are going. That's how you're going to build a relationship. That's how I built all my relationships. And that's how I was able to leverage going from nothing to the $23 million in real estate. I was building relationships based off those 3 sectors. And I was using that once I found a deal to line up my seller finance debt. And that's how I built relationships with investors to line up the equity piece for the down payment. Anybody can repeat this, including you. It doesn't matter where you're starting at, no matter how negative or how positive you might be right now on your financial situation. Keep it simple, map this out, share it with some people who have done what you want to do. You can absolutely repeat this. If you're new to the channel, make sure to hit the subscribe button, and we'll see you next time.
