In this 30th installment of his 35‑rule real‑estate series, Christian Osgood argues that communication is the single most critical skill for sourcing deals, raising private capital, and building lasting relationships in real‑estate investing. He introduces the "circle drill" – a three‑part storytelling framework consisting of Relatability, Goal, and Significance – and shows how to map both your own narrative and that of the person you’re speaking with. Osgood illustrates the framework with real‑world phone calls, meetings with owners, and partnership examples (e.g., moving from duplexes to a 12‑plex, a roof‑replacement project that led to multiple repeat deals, and scaling to a 100‑unit portfolio). He stresses the importance of concise, purposeful small talk, clear articulation of goals (e.g., retiring his wife), and linking those goals to a larger significance. The video also covers how to uncover and align the other party’s circle, use that insight to win deals and capital, and the necessity of diligent follow‑up (thank‑you notes, lunches, updates) to turn one‑off interactions into ongoing relationships. Finally, Osgood acknowledges that mastering communication takes practice, shares his early missteps, and encourages viewers to consistently refine their outreach scripts and relationship‑building habits.
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Hello YouTube, it's Christian Osgood and we are back this week for our 30th rule of real estate. We have 35 rules, we are wrapping up the series here in just a little over a month, but already working on the next series for you guys, so very excited to announce that, but we're not there yet. Just today we're talking about our 30th rule, which is communication is everything. Now if you're watching, don't skip yet because what you might have heard is communication is really important. Communication is everything, and I have a bunch of examples in this video of exactly why that is, how that plays out in your phone calls, in your meetings with owners, in your conversations with brokers, and ultimately why communication is how Cody and I got to where we are today. We're gonna break this down to a few easy-to-digest steps, and we're gonna dive in right now. So first of all, Communication is just how one individual or group communicates a thought or idea to someone else. Why is this so important? Well, we're in the relationship game. If you're looking to create a finance, seller finance, buying real estate, turns out the people who own the real estate are people who need to know who you are. If you want them to also lend to you, you need trust. To have trust, you need to be able to communicate who you are, what your goal is, and the significance behind that goal. We talk about this all the time with our circle drill, but we divide that into those 3 sections. Here's me in the middle of the circle. How do I divide up my story? Not a lot of people do this. We actually got the idea for this out of some obscure old Grant Cardone video, and we combined it with Jordan Belfort and a few other people to, to really define what is the circle drill. So I want to go into that. First of all, you have relatability. You start any conversation with a relatable point. This involves some amount of small talk, but you have a conversation with someone, you don't just open by diving straight in. It comes off as either arrogant or aggressive or just poor communication. If you want to communicate at the highest level, you start with a relatable point. And it's one point. Don't get stuck in small talk land. Hey, this is Christian. I own a duplex down the street from you. Relatable point. We both invest in the same area. I have a duplex, you have a 12-plex. I'm trying to scale up. Okay, well, I've communicated a goal now. Now people can help you achieve your goals, but they can't help you if you don't communicate what that goal actually is. So in our example here, I call Hey, it's Christian. I have a duplex. I was calling about your 12-plex. We're property neighbors. I wanted to get to know the people around me. Okay, we have a first step. They haven't hung up on me yet. I'm trying to scale up my portfolio. Oh, I'm not buying. Well, the good news is I just bought this duplex and I'm out of money. This is a true story. These are calls I've actually made. Okay, relatability. Maybe a little splash of humor with not having any money. But we go right into a goal. Why is that significant for me? When I was starting, I'm trying to retire my wife. She works in the school district. It's gotten crazy in the Seattle area. Most people here know exactly what I'm talking about. Not only does that increase relatability, now there's a reason. I'm not just investing because I want to buy your property. I'm not just investing because I want to invest and be rich. I have a goal, a target I'm moving towards, which is I wanna scale my portfolio to retire my wife. That's a full circle. If you wanna communicate at the highest level, you need to map this for everything in your life. Just take a whiteboard, and Cody and I have done this many times. Draw a circle, put your name in the middle. Now you gotta write anything of significance that has happened to you or that you've done. Graduated college, didn't graduate college, Dropped out of college. I did a sport. I didn't make it as far as I wanted to in a sport. Map each of these things out. I went on this epic vacation. I want to do more of these. Why is that significant? How is that going to relate to other people? Just map those 3 steps out. And what you're ultimately going to do is you're going to get in conversations with others and you're going to be a master of easily telling a story that goes through the circles that you drew. Each individual point has a goal, which has significance. And if you can communicate that easily and simply, people can get on board to help you. Now you have the harder part of the mission. You need to learn their circle drill. Now, if you want to know how Cody and I are raising millions of dollars of private money and how we're buying all this real estate, well, we're meeting with owners. And they're owners, not sellers. That's really important. View everyone as an owner, and you're talking to these owners, all you're doing is mapping their circle drill. And if you want to turn this into a game, whoever does a better job between you and that owner mapping the other person's circle drill is the winner. And as you start to play with people at higher and higher levels, you'll start to notice that other people are doing this. They might not call it the circle drill, but this is exactly what they do. They're measuring you up, they're listening to your pieces, and they're saying, okay, What are they trying to accomplish? Why is this interesting? Because you hit a point in real estate where it's just fun. You want to meet other players, you want to network, and they want to see who is this person, what are they about, and how are we going to interact together. So as you map their circle, you're going to ask them questions. If they're ahead of you, which they should be, how did you get to where you at, where you're at? How did you get started? These are normal questions to ask. You're starting to map The relatable points. Find pieces of their story that you relate to so you can tie it back into your circle drill. What have they done? How did they get there? So you can go through all that. What is the significance to them? What did it start as? And what are they trying to do today? The next thing you're gonna ask is you're gonna tie this back to your circle. If you've communicated who you are and they've communicated who they are and what they've done and how they've done it, How would you recommend I go out and do something similar? Or what do you suggest for me as a next step if I want to achieve what you've achieved? Now, when I had duplexes, this is how I learned how to buy a 38-plex. We went out, we had that conversation. When I had a 38-plex and I had no real units between that, we talked to people who owned multiple 12-plexes who had these small buildings in large portfolios. I haven't done that yet. I have a few duplexes and one sizable building. We met with them, we learned how they scaled transaction over transaction over transaction, learned a lot about creative finance there. When we got our 100-unit portfolio, I went to someone who owned a resort. That— how the heck did you do this? I have a team who loves short-term rentals, a lot of employees on my team who are good at this game. "but we have not run this type of business before. Can you show me how to run it?" And they did. And now we own a resort. And it's really that simple. The last piece that is really critical that you need to understand on communication is you map your drill, you know your circle, relatability, goals, significance. You know the other party's circle, relatability, goals, significance. You line 'em up. It works for capital, it works for deals. If everyone is on board and goals and significance aligns, you get a yes almost every time. The last thing you have to be able to do is you come back to those people. A relationship is exactly what you would expect. It's an ongoing relationship. What I see a lot of people get stuck on is the communication of they move from one person to the next meeting, to the next meeting, to the next meeting. They don't actually go back and turn their communication into a lasting relationship. When someone gives you that next step, when you ask, what would I do next? That next step for you, if you go out and do it and you come back to them and you say, I did what you said and this was my takeaway. I don't know why, but no one's doing that. I mean, almost no one ever does that. And when Cody and I started doing that, we would do the things they say. Instead of just saying yes, we move forward, we go back to them, we thank them, write them a letter, take them out to lunch, get them a bottle of wine, just sit down and say, hey, thank you. I appreciate what you did. And when I applied it, this is what happened and it moved me forward. An example I love to use because I love practical application. Cody bought a 12-plex from someone. It was the second building ever. They said, hey, the right thing to do would be to replace the roofs. They have these roofs that are shaped like this. It's called butterfly roof. So snow gets stuck in the middle and causes leaking and it's awful, especially in a snowy area. They said, hey, I'd go to a full pitch roof. It's going to be really expensive. It's the right thing to do. And I never got around to it. And I have other projects that are just bigger now. This 12-plex isn't interesting. Well, we did that roof. I partnered with Cody later. I bought into that deal with Cody, and together we took out the roof project. Two separate buildings, 12 units. They're gorgeous buildings now. They were pretty ugly. They're much prettier buildings. We painted them, roofed them. We invited the person over and said, look at what we did with the project that you gave us. We did exactly what you said, and it was expensive and it was hard. And we're so glad that we did it. Look at where we're at now. You know what he did? He said, well, guess what? I'm building a whole bunch of stuff one town south. I just want to sell it to you guys because you guys do what I told you you should do, and I trust you, and I know that you can operate because you showed me you can operate. To date, we've done 3 transactions with him for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 total buildings. Probably going to pick up another one here in another month or so. And that is exactly how you play the game. We go back, he's told us what to build on one of the properties. We're going to do our first small little development project. It's probably going to be 2 to 4 units on the back of an existing multifamily building. Is it a huge astronomical project? No, but it's new to us and it's pushing us forward. And when we finish that, and along the process, guess who I'm going to keep inviting over and thanking for their time, for their advice, and for the opportunity? Person who brought it. If you can master these relationships, I'm not kidding when I say communication is everything. Do you have to know your math? Yes. Do you have to have a basic fundamental understanding of real estate and debt and equity? Yes, but you can learn that all in a day on YouTube. The communication skill takes time. Our first phone calls to people sucked. And I mean that in all seriousness. I know Cody's were terrible because he told me a bunch of times. He had no idea what he was doing. Cody used to be scared to order food from a restaurant. For myself, I had a long, long sales career and there's still, when I made my first call, Cody was there for it. It was horrendous. Cody gave me a number and said, "Here, call this person." I was like, "Well, what's my script?" He's like, "Well, you can either call to book a meeting or to ask them to sell it." I didn't know what I was doing. I just asked for both and I word vomited everything. And guess what? I didn't get the meeting. You practice this consistently over time, you just keep doing it, the communication and your ability to communicate an idea and to build confidence in who you are, what you're trying to do, and why it is significant that you get there. If you can do that effectively, you will move forward faster. I absolutely promise you this is the key to playing the business real estate entrepreneurial game. So without further ado, I'm going to get you all back to your day. Tune in next week for our 31st rule of real estate. Like, subscribe. Talk to you soon.
