In this YouTube episode Christian Osgood and Cody discuss their eighth real‑estate rule: applying knowledge is far more valuable than merely gathering it. They share personal journeys—Christian scaling from a single duplex to a 79‑unit portfolio and Cody acquiring 100 units in three years despite starting with no money—to illustrate how rapid growth comes from taking action. The hosts critique the common habit of consuming endless books, podcasts, events, and scripts without ever executing, and they argue that real learning happens when you test information in the field. They outline a simple two‑question framework—‘How do we buy it?’ and ‘How do we never lose it?’—and stress the importance of cash‑flow positive deals, building relationships with local owners who have actually bought in the market, and feeding back to mentors after applying their advice. Practical tips include cold‑calling brokers daily, negotiating terms, and iterating on failed meetings. The overall message is a call to inventory existing knowledge, then immediately apply it to acquire multifamily properties, regardless of unit size, as the fastest path to wealth creation.
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Hello YouTube, it's Christian and Cody. We are back this week. We just got back from Texas. Today's topic is our 8th rule of real estate: the application is more important than the information. Now, this seems really basic, but don't skip yet. You are allowed to hit the like and subscribe button if you haven't already. However, don't skip because we're going to show you in this video how to go very, very fast as you are buying real estate when you apply information correctly. I started with 4 units, ran out of money, and after I ran out of money, got creative, scaled up to 79 units. I'll be over 100 units very soon. Cody started with actually no money and no experience. He didn't even start with the information. Over a 3-year period, he's collecting his 100 units. Incredible stories. We're going to show you how to go fast, but the main goal as you're collecting information— there's a ton out there, there's BiggerPockets, which is great. There are syndicators, there's books, there's all this information on how to do real estate. But if you— no matter what the strategy is, if you don't apply it, you're going to go absolutely nowhere.
Now, in the beginning, we started out and we started our little coaching business, and we got a whole bunch of people that came in. And the typical thing that people do, and we're seeing this as now coaches, and we're seeing it from the perspective of students is that people go gather as much information as they can. They want to become, in theory, the expert in as many topics as possible, and they never actually go out and apply it. There's a lot of people that we've worked with and people that I've studied from, and I realized that, oh my goodness, I'm just going out and getting all this info and I'm not actually trying it. People go through it and they get the script and they understand the phone call, they understand the purpose for the meeting, and then they never actually go do it. They just realize, oh, this makes sense, and then they can go regurgitate that and share that with other people. And the people that actually go out and use it are finding a lot of success with it. We've got a 19-year-old who's going out there, and right now he's just been hammering the phone. He decided not to go the owner scripting route, but to go and call every single broker almost every day for 9 months until they took him seriously.
That's doing it the hard way, by the way.
Yeah, I mean, you can beat your head against a wall, but at the end of the day, if you do it and you actually go out and apply, you're going to do better than the people who just absorb information. He's under contract on a seller-financed 10-plex and working on a seller-financed 49-unit in Texas. This is doable, but at the end of the day, yes, you can go get a whole bunch of information, and yes, in theory You can be the expert in whatever you want to be the expert in, but until you go out and apply it, you're never going to know how it truly works. When it comes down to not everything's going to go exactly as planned, you're not going to know how to pivot, how to navigate, how to just flow through a situation because you've never actually done it before. Application is senior to the information, always.
Now, we told you we're going to show you how this makes you go fast, how you progress every time you apply. So back to my original story, for me, before the 4 units, I studied real estate maybe 5 years. I was 2 years into my sales career. 5 years before I actually bought real estate, I had made a commitment to myself, hey, I want to buy real estate. And I read Brandon Turner's book, which you should, the book on rental property investing. It's a really good book if you're trying to wrap your head around, you know, What are the basics of multifamily investing? It makes it really simple for you. And I committed there, hey, I'm going to do this. I talked to my wife, we got all excited, and we keep pushing forward. Then I go to a few events, I go to a few seminars, I talk to a few brokers. And I actually called in Boise, Idaho right before Boise, Idaho really took off. And I called a couple of brokers and a couple lenders, and their advice was the market's way too inflated. This is the wrong time to dive in. So what did I do? I held off. I didn't buy anything. I kept gathering information. I didn't buy anything. I finally bought a duplex. And within 5 months, I bought another duplex. And within 3 months, I bought a 38-plex.
Simplicity matters. If you're watching this, you just have to keep it simple and go apply things. Christian bought the smallest multifamily building he could have ever bought. Mm-hmm. 2 units. And then he decided to double down. And then he went to 42 units. He bought a 38-plex plus this 4, he's at 42. He just had to go out there and apply and stop gathering information from people that weren't actually in the space going out and applying for themselves. People that absorb a bunch of information love to just put it right back out, and then they never end up going out and doing things.
At the end of the day, was it hard? Absolutely. I spent 7 years to buy a duplex. When I bought a duplex, I mean, I was out of money by my second duplex, so don't think I just saved up and bought, you know, a 100-unit portfolio. In 1 year from when I bought my second duplex, I retired myself from the 9-to-5, and I retired my wife, which was my original goal. Both of us in 12 months are financially free. It's really hard to go that fast, and I did have to leave my job first to do that, but you can do it in a year. And more likely, slow it down a little bit, be reasonable, and do it in 2 years, do it in 3 years. It's not get rich quick, and there's a lot of work that goes into this. But if you apply the information correctly, it is building lasting wealth way, way faster than those around you because you are applying the information around you. And when you apply it, you become a master of that information because you're no longer operating in theory. You don't just know all this information. You've done it. That inspires people, that inspires confidence, which gives you more opportunities. You move faster every time you apply. It adds to your story. So if you're trying to craft, okay, how do I move forward, your first step is take what you already know and just apply it. If you decided, hey, I'm going to buy multifamily, you can go buy a 50-unit, and that's awesome, and you should do that if you're confident in doing that. But at the end of the day, if you buy a duplex it is just as valuable to moving you forward as buying that 50-unit. You just need to apply the information and go.
And you don't have to solve for some crazy equation. There's only 2 questions we ask ourselves, and then we just have to apply based on what we find from those questions. How do we buy it? How do we never lose it? We've talked about that on the channel before, but it is really that simple. As soon as you figure out, okay, this is how I buy it, go do it. The quickest way to own real estate is to go buy real estate. If you know you just need to talk to a property owner, learn how they got to where they're at, ask for the recommendation of how they could help you out and how you guys could work together. If you just figure out that, you just have to go do it. And after a few meetings, you'll probably botch some. I've botched meetings before, that's okay. Just call them back in 12 months and say, hey, I was that guy who botched the phone call or botched the meeting, 19 years old, can we meet up again? I learned a little bit more and I applied what you shared. The application matters. And on another segue to this, you go out and learn from these owners. The application is more important than the information. They're going to give you info. They're going to show you how they did what they did. But what really is significant about those relationships, what ties the so-called knot with that relationship, is you apply what they tell you to do. If they tell you to go do X, Y, and Z, if you go do it and you go back to them and say, I did this, What do you recommend next? You're going to strengthen that relationship. The application is vital to creating that relationship.
No one does that, by the way. When people give information, people go off and they do their own thing. One, they rarely apply that information, if ever. And two, they never go back to the person and go, hey, I applied the information. What do you recommend I do next? If you really want to answer the how do I buy it question, because we talk about, you know, that's the how is the deal structured, what is the actual opportunity? How you buy it is you talk to the people who've bought in your market. Because whatever you watch on this channel for free, or if you took our online course, The Multifamily Strategy, or if you took someone else's course, there is no one who is a better expert on how to buy in your market than the person who owns real estate in your market. So if you go meet them and you talk about how they bought their property, you're going to learn how to buy real estate in that market. And that is why we say this works anywhere, with anyone, at any age, anytime. Because there are people who—
a lot of anys.
There's a lot of anys because it is applicable anywhere, anywhere, anyone. It's really, really simple. But the owners in your market know how to buy in your market because they've done it. That is the person who will show you how to buy it. How do you never lose it is just cash flow. The nice thing is, is when you have a relationship and they put a deal in front of you, instead of just pitching you a deal for what they want to see, they will understand where you are. They're not going to give you a deal if they're invested in helping you, that you can't do. So if it doesn't cash flow, you can come back to them and say, well, you understand my pieces. I, I love this and this and this. I can't have negative cash flow day one on my first deal because then I'll just go broke. There's no money. There's, there's no money.
We've done that to renegotiate on terms. We don't like to renegotiate price often, but we will renegotiate terms to make it work. And they understand that because they had to go through a period. A lot of the people that bought in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, at least in Washington, cash flowed negative for a while. There's a couple years of cash flow negative unless they put a ton of money down. They understand it, that it's painful. And if you can relate to those stories, they'll help you renegotiate.
So take one second, think about where you're at today. Think about some of the books that you've read that you haven't applied yet. If you're an event junkie Don't worry, there's a lot of you out there. I've been one. If you've gone to 10X 5 times and you've gone to VPCon and you haven't acted on it yet, take inventory of that. That's fine. It's great. You have information. Now go apply it. And that is the most important thing you can do. I can say that with confidence. We say that a lot on this channel. Like, this is the number one thing. That is the number one thing. Gain information and actually apply it. If you do that, you move forward. If you buy multifamily real estate, turns out that makes you a multifamily investor.
And speaking on the application, smash the like button. But that is it for today's YouTube video. We will see you next Wednesday for Whiteboard Wednesday.
