How Christian went from 0 to 55 units without syndication in one year

Hey YouTube, it's Christian. I'm here without Cody this week, and the reason is today is me sharing just my story on how I went from 0 to 55 units. It's a little different than Cody's, which is why we wanted to separate these as different videos. The goal of this video is for anyone listening to understand, hey, this is what a real person did to go from 0 to 55 units in a year. This is a way that you can go fast, and these are principles that you can follow that can help you find success anywhere else. So if nothing else, I hope there's some takeaway for you in here. But I'm just gonna start in telling my story. And for me, a lot of my motivation started growing up with my parents. I was blessed to be in a family with both parents together. We were well provided for, more or less the epitome of middle class, whatever that means. It's what I picture in my head as middle class. Mother stayed home most of raising us, single income. Father provided for me and my two sisters, and we were financially taken care of. We weren't super rich, but we lived in a good house in a good neighborhood and went to good schools. It was a— I had a good upbringing. What I lacked was time with my father. The cost of that provision came at a 9 to 11 hour workday and about an hour commute either direction. If you're familiar with Seattle, that, that traffic can get a lot worse, so we'll say a minimum of 2-hour commute every day. But it just resulted in a dad who, when he came home, needed to unwind for a little bit. So come home, watch sports, decompress a little bit. He'd work a lot of weekends, so I'd get usually part of Saturday and Sunday with my dad. Fast forward all the way to entering college, I had a goal in my head of how do I not sacrifice time? Because my dad didn't have fun doing that. We had amazing provision. He— I mean, super blessed to have him, and I know it was rewarding for him providing, but when he was working, I know he was not having fun during the bulk of his day. And I saw that growing up, and I'm like, I do not want that. I do not want that. I do not want that. How do I avoid the traditional 9-to-5 while still providing for my future family. Went to college, went through business school, and did not get the answers I was looking for. I learned a little bit about a lot. I think I learned more about life and just communicating with other people than I did actual business. But I went through that and I started my first nonprofit right out of college and it failed miserably. I had no idea what I was doing. I partnered with the wrong people. They stole money. Everything was terrible. And I went, okay, I'm gonna stop solving for time. My dad provided great, that's good enough. I'm gonna follow in his footsteps. I went into sales because that was my skill set, and I did well for about 7, 8 years. I sold, I had success. I traded a lot of time for what most people would consider a good salary. I jumped out of the sales game at least working for other people's sales, about a year ago, and at that time I was making about $200,000 a year. Great salary. I stepped out of that into a $60K a year job starting a business with someone else. Jumped into their existing companies. We launched a call center. I had a product. It was just starting to fire on profitability. And that company got shut down. And looking back, I had a moment where I was like, wow, every time I try to start something, it feels like it doesn't work. And I spent a lot of time again on that. And so I'm looking back going, okay, this solving for time thing is not working. During that year, I met Cody and I started buying real estate. And I bought my first duplex, and Cody brought me to Central Washington and convinced me to buy this second duplex, which was one of the most profitable buildings I own as far as cash invested to cash flow. It's an amazing deal, beautiful little building. I'm sitting here with 4 units and that company's winding down, and all I can think about is how do I scale this? How do I not give up on my goal? One duplex at a time is not going to get me financial freedom at a rate that builds anything that I'm trying to build. Cody and I take on a 38-unit building, um, and it did not take a lot of sales. Cody found it, then he went, Christian, I found a 38-unit building, here's the math, I love it, do you want to do it with me? I thought for about 2 seconds, like, this is what I need to do, yes. We bought that. I then found a 7-plex. Cody and I bought that. Uh, we did 3 side-by-side duplexes. We're buying a bunch more this year. They all cash flow. It starts to build. I went from point A to point B, from first duplex back at the very, very end of 2020 to by the end of 2021, I had 55 units that I'm an owner of. They're cash flowing, they're bringing in an income. I all of a sudden am starting to reach my goals. What I hope to do, like my father, my wife and I would like to start having kids in the next couple years. That costs money. I would like to have my time owned by me by that time, which means I need to keep acquiring, I need to keep stabilizing this portfolio. So I'm going to keep doing that beyond that goal. I've realized that I'm going to hit this goal and I'm going to hit it fast. Once I committed and locked in, things started coming into place. My why was big enough for me to scale beyond this. I need a bigger why, and I am going to try to help as many people as I possibly can who want out of the 9 to 5, which I don't think is actually as many people as you would think. But for the few people who really want to break out of that 9 to 5 and want to control their time, this is a way to do that. I 100% believe in how we do business, how we find deals, and so I am focusing a lot more efforts on coaching and investing in other people and helping those who want to spend more time with their kids claim that time and provide for their families all getting time with their kids. That for me is a big enough why to just keep scaling and growing everything we're doing. Cody and I have started several companies in the last few months based around managing these properties, getting other people into properties, teaching them how to form relationships with owners, not being transactional. These are all things that I'm really passionate about that we're doing now. And if you wanna have success in real estate, you need to define that why. It is the most important piece. When you know why you're doing things, you can now talk to people. There's 3 pieces to communication, or at least effective communication. You need significance, you need a clear target for people to buy into, and you need a big enough reason for them to want to act. I've had so much help getting from point A to point B, and that is the point of this message. You need help. If you are going to go fast, if you are going to build something large, it needs to be larger than you. So for me, I want to help as many people as possible. I communicate that story, and I've gotten a lot of buy-in from other people. That's where all my deals come from. I know what people want because I talk to them about their goals, and that is what I care about. The properties have all just flown in passively as a function of going out and meeting new people and talking to them about what they want to do. They'll either introduce me to the next person that I need to be introduced to, or occasionally they are just going to offer me a deal out of nowhere that helps move me forward. In exchange, I do everything that I can to move others forward. If you can execute on that, you're going to have success in this space. That is what I found in my first year. I'm entering year 2, and we're going to put everything that we do between Cody and I on this channel. We're going to share successes, failures. If any of this has been motivating, helpful, you have questions, you hate this, any of that, please include it in the comments. I would love to see if this is at all helpful, if there's anything that I need to share that would be helpful to you. Other than that, hope this was helpful.