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Life by Design is a podcast that shares the experiences and tools you need to start living the life you desire, free from indecision, anxiety, and compromise.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:11] Welcome to Life By Design podcast. We are your hosts, Brian and Jessilyn Persson. This is the first episode of our podcast, so we're going to share a little bit of our history and why we chose to do this podcast and do what we do now.
Brian Persson: [00:00:25] Mhm. Yeah. And throughout the podcast series that we're going to record here into the future, we are going to talk a lot about all the tools we picked up over the years. We're going to share a lot of our stories. We are going to give you all of the experiences that it took for us to get here today. So for this first episode, we are going to go over that history. So Jessilyn, talk a little bit about your professional couple life and why you wanted to get here to this table and help professional couples solve their problems and and resolve conflict, communicate better. Let's hear your history.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:06] Absolutely. So I am a senior project manager, a mom of two. And throughout that I found our relationship, it had its ups and downs, with us both being career-focused people, different careers, trying to manage what we have. And as time went on, I mean, the hurdles we went through and the pains and the illnesses, I would love to help other couples avoid that if possible, or the solutions and tools we have help them to get through it if they're currently in it. And that is kind of what brought me here today. How about yourself?
Brian Persson: [00:01:43] Very similar. Yeah. I worked in the tech industry for a long time, had a really good career, definitely had those golden handcuffs on me for a long time. And but eventually, you know, you just start to look at your life and you start to realize that there are things that are missing. And cracks start to show up. And recently, recently a few years ago now for us, we both really looked at those cracks and we figured out exactly how we were going to go and solve them, remake them, whatever it looked like. And so that ended up in this podcast, that landed us here today to share all those stories, how we got through all those years and solved a lot of our own problems. So that's kind of a little bit of the history. Let's talk about exactly how we shared or how we solve some of our problems in the past. So what is a typical problem that a couple like us has in their relationship?
Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:43] I think communication is a really big barrier just between the flows of being busy with your career and your children's needs. Sometimes we put our partners to the side or when we are together, I found one of the big things for myself is that I was not very good at expressing what I wanted and my needs, and so I would hold it within and that would cause anger. It would cause bitterness towards you as my spouse for not understanding and helping me, which I learned later was it's 100% my responsibility because you wouldn't even know, I didn't tell you. So I would say, I think as a female, asking for what I want and asking for help is one of the hardest things I had to overcome.
Brian Persson: [00:03:36] Yeah, for sure, for sure. For me it was very similar, but I felt I was probably the overexpressed type. Whereas you tried to not express, I probably overexpressed. And you know, as a guy, I kind of felt unheard. And so there are situations like that where someone is not expressing and the other person is perhaps expressing and not being heard or feeling like they're not being heard. So what, how did we solve that? How did we actually, what tool did we use to actually overcome that and make sure that we can communicate effectively together?
Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:11] We had to do a lot of discovery. So I know over the past few years we really dug deep into self-development and learning who we are at the core and some of the stories from our past that held us to where we were in our present and that we brought forward. And then with the self-development, you start to discover, like the areas where you maybe aren't as strong as you thought, or that could use improvement or things that were holding you back that you didn't even realize were there until we took that time to really dig deep. So I'd say definitely discover yourself first. But then we came together to start discovering like, hey, where were those holes and those cracks in our relationship that, we knew were there as cracks, but we didn't really put it together that that was part of what our relationship had become. And we knew we had to fill those and bridge those to become stronger as a couple.
Brian Persson: [00:05:13] Yeah. Over the years, within all that personal development, it almost became a rule between us that it was allowed to push the other person. And I think in a lot of relationships, to push the other person in a particular way is almost offensive in a lot of relationships. But for us, it was actually sort of the rule. We, it was you must keep moving along with me and I must keep moving along with you. And inside of that, we created actually our framework, which we'll talk about in future episodes, the Discover Define Design Framework, which is where the discover comes from. And ultimately, at the end of that, really started to design our life. So one of the big things that I think helped us, like after we kind of got all the communication and actually started listening to each other, was a tool where, a simple tool called scheduling, and we would actually schedule conversations. And it sounds so boring to schedule conversations. But as a tool for your relationship in a busy professional couple's life, you have to schedule. Like you schedule meetings, you schedule other things. You should schedule communication into your relationship.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:34] Absolutely. I know when we first did it, I was a little skeptical because I was like, why do we need to talk about this every week? But it forced me, for a lack of better words, to actually speak, as opposed to holding it in, putting it aside, thinking it wasn't important, it gave me a platform to say what was on my mind, good or bad. And then I knew every week, even if there's something bothering me in the week, and I was like, uh, tuck it aside, or it's not that big of a deal, by the time we got to the weekend when we usually had it scheduled, I knew that was my platform to talk to you about what was bothering me or where I needed help, or you had ways to encourage things out of me so that you could help understand me better. And then in exchange, I also got to understand you better and what your needs were and how I wasn't really hearing what you needed or what you had to say.
Brian Persson: [00:07:33] Yeah, there's definitely an encouragement between the two of us, for sure. But what the scheduling really does is it provides a place where there's no excuses. So if you don't express what you wanted to express to me, and vice versa, if I don't express to you and that event goes past and you haven't done that, well, that was the place where you were supposed to do it. Now it's it's kind of on you or it's on me to either wait till the next time we talk, and, but ultimately it takes a responsibility into your own hands. And it says like, you are responsible now for communicating at this time. And if you don't do it, that's on you. Right? Whereas a lot of times, or in our past, what would you do? I could tell you what you did, but it's up to you to say that.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:08:27] I chose to talk about it, which I rarely did. And that's where I would, it would build up and I'd start to get anger and resentment toward you for not understanding me. And then the generally, by the time it came out, it was too late and it was more like an explosion, and it would cause more kind of tension and fight in us. And instead of it being like a casual conversation where we could actually talk heart to heart, it would be more like anger pushing it out. And you're just like receiving this powerful blow from me. And I'm not sure I would have been, I was as receptive to even hear you by then, because I was just still stuck in my anger and frustration.
Brian Persson: [00:09:10] Yeah, yeah, it would build up and then just explode. And you can probably guess what I did too. I'm going to guess, you can say it, but I'll be the one to say it. And that was I would do the opposite, I would actually, well similar to you, I would keep it in, but I would just kind of get more angry in life, not necessarily at anything in particular, but it would come out and it would, it would just affect everything. But I would kind of, I don't remember ever exploding anyway, but it would, but there would be like a seep into the relationship. So one way or another, we were just holding it in and waiting for that time for it to just come out, and then all of a sudden, like it was, it was coming out in a very negative way. Whereas when we scheduled our conversations, there was no chance for it to come out in that way. You know, there was real things to talk about in those, in those weekly conversations, which we still have to this day, but there was no chance for it to, like, fester in any way or explode at some point in the future because everything was dealt with little by little, like, just like lifting weights, right? You lift weights, lift weights. And we dealt with our communication little by little every single week and never allowed anything to like, get out of control. So what was another issue that we commonly had in our professional couple life? What about you and your drive and how it affected you, your health, your family, things like that?
Jessilyn Persson: [00:10:45] Oh yeah, for sure. I am extremely driven. Those who know me know that well. I take on way more than I can handle. Um, although I always still kind of kept it going, and I just always wanted more. And I still do. It's not that I don't, but for the longest time in my career, I was chasing the money and I finally got to, quote/unquote, the money and a couple of things happened. One, I realized what you were telling me is that it isn't really what I wanted to chase because I had the money and I was like, okay, yeah. So what? Right? But the other thing is that I had gone so hard into one of my contracts, and after the money, that I went into burnout and my body just shut itself down because I wasn't listening to my body and I was forced, two months to stay in the house because I just, I couldn't be anything. I was just nauseous, headaches, you name it, I just, there was nothing. I just couldn't leave the house. And so I took some time off, as you're aware, and I had to really look at what happened there. And that's when I also realized that I missed out on some of the things that happened with our boys, because I was just working 60 hour weeks and that wasn't what I wanted.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:06] And so I was like, okay, I've chased the money, I got the money. If it's not the money, what is it? And so over the next few months, I really dug in and started some more, of course, self-development. And I realized I don't want, I want the money, because I love money, but because the money gives me the freedom and the choice. I really want the choice to be able to do what we want, when we want. And whether that meant we could go to the boys to read, like the boys' school to read with them on a lunch hour when it was reading week, or show up to their recitals, or work somewhere else, somewhere hot, where I would love to be. I realized I couldn't do that on the path I was living, and so that's when I was like, okay, it's time to pivot and figure out how do I go down and create that life that I want.
Brian Persson: [00:13:01] We re-engineered a huge chunk of our life during that year. So you had your burnout. I had probably been in a career that I should have left long, long ago, or at least changed around. So whereas you were pushing hard and burning out, I was, I'm going to call it like kind of dying in my career because I just, I should have moved companies, I should have moved contracts, I should have, should have changed something. But I was just kind of, at that time, I was a little bit blind to know that it wasn't right for me at that point.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:34] You were, I'd probably say coasting. And you were...
Brian Persson: [00:13:36] It was 100% coasting--
Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:37] -- just living the life as it was. You didn't see anything past it.
Brian Persson: [00:13:43] Yeah. Yeah. Like literally could not see past that job. And because I couldn't see past that job, like, we're not stupid as humans, right. We are, as some of our background comes from we're lie detecting machines. Right? And we lie detect ourselves too. And I knew I was lying to myself staying in that career. And eventually we met the right people, you know, during that, during your burnout, we were getting involved in some other businesses. Yeah. And during your burnout, we were getting involved in other businesses. And isn't that funny? But like, but once you kind of had that, the 60 hour work week kind of put to the side, and you put that, and you gave yourself some time to give yourself a break, those other businesses suddenly became more meaningful. And at that point, when we met those other people and those other businesses, very forward-thinking people, a lot of is who we started to surround ourselves by. And that's when I kind of had the aha of like, you know what? Like you don't have to have the golden handcuffs your whole life. You can move on past that and you're not going to die if you leave your job and you're not, you're not going, you know, your identity is not going to end when you exit that office door and never go back in it.
Brian Persson: [00:15:09] And so I think it was, what was it, six months after you had your burnout? I actually left my long-term career and we started working with these other partners. And for the next year, year and a bit, we built a whole nother business, which was a very quick turnaround compared to how slow we moved in the past. It was three months, basically, I think, from conception to like working in the business and actually building that business over that, over that year. Yeah. So that was a few years ago now. And then after that we kind of got our life back, I guess you could say, where we could go to the boys' recital and we could have flexibility to do things. And, but what one thing we didn't do over that time was we didn't make a whole lot of money because we were building that business. So we went from very, very well paid to almost no pay.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:16:10] Yeah. Yeah. Extreme.
Brian Persson: [00:16:13] Yeah. Very, very extreme. Building that business. And that came with other challenges. And we had communication problems inside of that too, because things weren't moving fast enough for you. Right? I was trying to take on businesses that I didn't understand and I didn't know how to build at that time. And so there was a lot of problems between us in terms of like, expectations, what should be happening, what shouldn't be happening. And that's really where the scheduling that we talked about earlier got solidified, where it's like we need a structure to both run our business, run our family, run ourselves, and make sure that there's a steady flow of communication and effective communication between us.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:01] Yeah.
Brian Persson: [00:17:01] And then inside of all that we came up with our workshop and we came up with this podcast, and we decided we really needed to show other professional couples like, that it can be done, you can communicate effectively, you can resolve conflict. You can, you know, move past things that, past barriers that seem, like, indestructible. Like that you just cannot move past them.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:30] Yes. Yeah, definitely inside of that, we gained a lot of knowledge and a lot of tools and quite quickly, because in that year, year and a half, when we were working with other partners, we were, with the self-development we just had more time to learn it, conceptualize it, figure out what we want to do with it. And that just gave us a bigger picture. And we know just from conversations with others, because we get asked all the time, like when we're at conferences for our real estate, because as real estate investors, people would approach and ask us, how do we do it? Like, I can't get my partner to even want to hear what I'm doing, investing. And then when everything shifted online with the pandemic, you and I were like, side by side at a desk on Zooms, and...
Brian Persson: [00:18:19] Literally side by side, almost shoulder to shoulder.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:18:21] And people would look at us like we were crazy. They're like, I couldn't even be in the same business or house as my wife or husband. How are you two sitting beside each other running a business in the same house, raising two young boys, and we're like, that's where we kind of got that Aha, like, you know what? We got something here that we can share with the world to help other professional couples to be able to hopefully get rid of that barrier of owning a business together or real estate together, or being comfortable enough to have that conversation, that, and let them know, because it could be real estate, for example, is really important to maybe one of the partners and the other one might not care at all. But that one who really cares about it wants their partner to listen to them and hear the excitement and be excited with them. And so through the tools that we're going to share over our podcasts, I think it's just going to really help other professional couples come together more cohesively. And that, in turn, not just helps them in their relationship, which is amazing of course, but everything outside of that, their kids, their family, their business, or if they're in the corporate world, how they're dealing with people corporately. Because when you're happy inside and you've got this great connection with your partner, there's so much less for you to have to deal with that it gives you freedom to focus on your kids, on your career, or see things that work that you probably wouldn't have seen before because you're so focused on inside, and the things that were kind of on your mind because it wasn't maybe resolved here with your partner.
Brian Persson: [00:20:04] Yeah, a lot of people think, I know I was, I know I was there in the past. It was like once the situation was dealt with, you think it leaves you, you know? Okay, that situation really annoyed me. And then you think you deal with it and you think you put it to the side, but really you're carrying that along throughout the whole time. And it weighs on you and you, if you can't resolve those conflicts, and you can't, like whether it's internally or whether it's between you and I or your partner, then it just, it just eventually builds to a weight that you can't really manage anymore. So we're, I would say now not, not always, but now we are quite ruthless in like seeking that stuff out and making sure that it doesn't, it's not something we have to carry along because if we have to carry that along, then what are we missing in our business? What are we missing in our family? What are we missing in all these other areas of our life if you're trying to constantly keep your mind on focus and away from the problems with your partner, right?
Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:10] 100%.
Brian Persson: [00:21:11] Yeah. You mentioned you mentioned real estate. That was a, that was a huge conflict for us in the past. And because we travel in real estate circles, we see it over and over and over again amongst couples where there's almost always one couple, one side of the couple, man or woman, that is not on board with the real estate. Yeah. And for for us, that was me.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:35] That was you.
Brian Persson: [00:21:36] I was not on board. And looking back at it, I know why now I wasn't on board, because it was a whole lot of work that I had to take on, and I didn't really want to take it on at that time because we had careers, we had all these other things going on. We had kids, right? That took a lot of time. And we're, and you would want to build the real estate portfolio. And I was like, nah, like, this is way too much work and we can't do that.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:22:03] Uh huh.
Brian Persson: [00:22:04] Yeah, yeah.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:22:05] I signed you up to join a network that of other successful individuals in real estate investing. And that's where you grew and that's where our portfolio grew.
Brian Persson: [00:22:15] And that's a trick I encourage any couple out there to use, because I've done it to you and you've done it to me. And sometimes you need to realize that you are not the source of truth for your partner. You couldn't tell me why real estate was important. So you went and got somebody else to tell me why real estate was important. And the meeting that you were talking, or the events that you were talking about, that you signed me up to, the very first event changed probably our whole lives together. Collectively. Because I remember meeting one guy and he just flippantly said, Oh, yeah, like, I'm on track to, you know, have $25,000 a month in passive income in ten years. And I'm like, at that time we were just like, especially me, right? I was like, Oh my God. Like, is that even a thing? Can you, can you do that? And you're a early sleeper. And I remember that night I came home around midnight, I think it was after talking with a whole bunch of people there at that real estate event all night and, like, shaking you awake and going, do you know what you can do with real estate? And and you were just like, Yes, honey, I've been telling you forever what you can do with real estate.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:23:30] Pretty much. And I probably went right back to sleep.
Brian Persson: [00:23:32] Also let me go to sleep. Yeah, but, like, you know, you couldn't tell me, right? And and there were other situations where we would encourage each other to go and meet certain people that we knew they had the answers, even though, you know, I knew the answer, too. But coming from my mouth, it wasn't as effective as coming from that other person's mouth. Sounds a little bit manipulative, but really it, you just need more than just that one voice inside of the relationship. It's, it is two people, but there's a lot of things that have to go on around that. Yeah. So I think we covered a lot of our history here--
Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:16] -- we did --
Brian Persson: [00:24:17] -- today. Yeah. What are we going to talk about in future episodes?
Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:21] So we're going to share a lot of our tools, techniques, stories. We have many on what we've gone through, what we've done, to help our audience use in their relationships and not necessarily just with their partner, which of course is our focus, but these tools work in any relationship, whether it's with your kids, your boss, your coworkers. But we are going to share those. And each time we'll have a different topic to cover and a tool you can take away to start practicing in your life to see how it works. And yeah, that's...
Brian Persson: [00:24:56] Yeah, one of the things that we created, and that is part of our workshop, part of our pretty well daily life is called - and we mentioned it earlier in the podcast - it's called the Discover Define Design Framework. And basically what it is is a tool, almost a pathway on how to communicate better. You can use it in any situation. And so in future episodes, I think we're going to really break that down and allow our listeners to really understand what it means to discover, define and design their communication in their life using that framework.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:25:34] Yeah, 100%. We are here to help professional couples, and all couples, just resolve conflict and improve communication throughout their relationships. And that in turn has a ripple effect. And it'll open their options to create a life by design, one they love and want to wake up to every day and live every day.
Brian Persson: [00:25:58] Yeah, yeah, I'm super excited to share a lot of what we have to offer. And you know, honestly, just being here and doing this podcast just improves our life too. So there's win-win all around. And that's one of the big reasons why we wanted to do this podcast is just to help ourselves, help everybody else out there, and make sure that we can give as much as we can get.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:22] Yeah.
Brian Persson: [00:26:23] Yeah. All right. That wraps our first podcast.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:27] So we want to thank you for listening to us. We appreciate that. And if you like our podcast, we encourage you to subscribe and keep following us on our journey to help you with yours.
Brian Persson: [00:26:37] All right. Fantastic. Thank you.