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Life by Design is a podcast that shares the experiences and tools to help couples align their wealth goals and reclaim their time, enabling them to experience freedom, abundance, and a life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (00:01)
Welcome to the Life By Design Podcast we're Jessilyn and Brian Persson, struggling to align your financial goals or confidently invest in real estate as a couple,
Brian Persson (00:10)
That's why we created this podcast and the Riches Relationships and Real Estate Program to help you build wealth and strengthen your relationship. Visit weekendwealth.ca to take our quiz and discover your real estate investor type. Let's create the life you deserve together.
Jessilyn Persson (00:27)
Today we're going to talk about being obsessed. So one of our mentors, Grant Cardone, wrote a book called Be Obsessed or Be Average. And so this episode is about our experiences with how we found obsession in our lives. And we hope you hear something that resonates with you and you can find your obsession too. So let's talk about what it means to be obsessed.
Brian Persson (00:50)
Right. So for me, it is basically having all your thoughts consumed with that particular thing. So for me, know, daily basis, I'm constantly thinking about real estate, I'm constantly thinking about different ways to do a deal, ⁓ where I need to be looking next, how I need to be negotiating with whoever I need to be negotiating with.
where my next partner is, where my next service provider is, it's just always on my mind all the time.
Jessilyn Persson (01:23)
Yeah, and for me, it's about going all in. So when I make a decision, I'm not necessarily thinking about 24-7, but I go all in. I'm not just one toe in, testing the waters. It's I'm all in and I achieve what I set out to achieve and what I had decided to be obsessed about.
Brian Persson (01:45)
Yeah, and we might have said it before on previous podcast, but we use the analogy of the tortoise and the hare. And Jessilyn is the hare and I am the tortoise. And it's not that, ⁓ you know, the results are any different. It's more actually just the actions of going about your obsession. So for Jess, she will just crush something in like a couple months and then she will rest afterwards, just like the hare does.
Jessilyn Persson (02:12)
for maybe a couple months.
Brian Persson (02:14)
Whereas me, it's more of, it's more just like a constant like thing every day. I design my days and my weeks to just have it constantly in my life and it sort of never leaves it. It kind of like the tortoise. just like keeps walking and he never stops.
Jessilyn Persson (02:30)
Yeah, you take one step after the other and then you incorporate it and it just starts to become you. Whereas I jump in, I race to the finish line, I figure it out, I get there and then I'm just that. Right? Two different styles completely, but they both get the outcome we're looking for.
Brian Persson (02:49)
Yeah, yeah. And we figured out exactly how to use that in our life where I kind of, I'm like the tortoise, you know, I have that big shell on my back that can carry all the weight and, and, just keeps moving along, like carrying, carrying everything to the finish line. And you are kind of the starter, the person who just zooms off and sort of shows the initial path and then like waits for like everything else to, to catch up to you.
Jessilyn Persson (03:15)
Yeah, I don't find I have the patience once I make a decision why I'd have to wait. I guess odd sometimes. Like I remember when I decided I wanted to become a project manager and I wanted to get my certification. So I qualified on resumes and I remember telling my mentor that I had signed up to take the exam and I gave him the date and he was like, great, how long have you been studying? I'm like, ⁓ five weeks. And he goes, well, it's okay. You get three chances to write the exam. He's like,
I studied for at least three months, Jess, and most people study for a year. was like, okay. So I went in, crushed the exam, only studied five weeks, and then the same thing happened when I decided to become an actual project manager, right? You get your experience, and I remember reaching out to a different mentor of mine, and I was...
⁓ a little frustrated. I was like I want to be a project manager now right not like in two years and he goes well Jess it takes time to get the experience you know I I would say it'll take probably about two years for you to get the experience you need to actually roll into a project manager role and I was like no I don't I'm not okay with that and so I just took on as much as I could I crushed it and in six months I got the I got the promotion to be in project manager. Yeah.
Brian Persson (04:32)
And project management works really well for you and your personality, that sort of hair-like personality where you know, projects have a start and an end. You can zoom off really fast and you can end it and then you can go on to the next thing. Whereas a lot of the stuff that I take on in our ⁓ business and in our real estate, it's the stuff that like is constantly there. So the management of tenants, the
management of service providers. I have clients that I've had for a decade on other aspects of our business and I think for you that would be rather boring. Be like, oh my god, this guy is still around like 10 years later? Where's the new things happening?
Jessilyn Persson (05:16)
Yeah, I'm getting a little better, but yeah, I agree. I prefer in and out, getting things done.
Brian Persson (05:21)
Yeah, but as I told one of my good friends, ⁓ know, the money is in the grind. It's that daily repetitive action that really starts to produce the money, not the short, fast bursts, you know, can have some, you know, definitely like can start the fire for sure. But then after that, you need a way to like keep that fire going consistently and for a long period of time. So it's really good that we've found out that
those different types of our personality work really well for us and that we've accepted where they lie. ⁓
Jessilyn Persson (05:59)
absolutely. ⁓ I mean, I know when we decided to do real estate, we just jumped in on our first deal together. It was probably a little more me convincing you at hindsight, but I go back and look. But we did it and we stayed on that for a few years before we decided to look at a different concept. So instead of condos and single single family houses, we jumped into sweeted homes. But when we did, we jumped.
all in just we jumped all into real estate but then when we realized there was maybe different options we jumped all in and just did sweated homes right and we bought I think four sweated properties or four properties four and then we sweated them and then but we did that back to back as opposed to just trial and error and that was in I think two maybe three years total to get all those four ⁓ and then we realized okay that really worked for us so
We stuck with those for a while and decided to shift our portfolio and remove the condos, which aren't really our favorite investment type. And then as of late last year, we decided to go all in on multifamily. ⁓
Brian Persson (07:11)
Yeah, yeah. And to rewind and just let the audience know how obsessed we were at each different stage. So when you say we jumped into real estate, we had known each other for six months or seven months, I think at that point, when it was in 2009. It six months. Yeah, yeah. There we go. So we were not married. had only been dating for six months.
Jessilyn Persson (07:30)
Six months.
I think we've only been living together for one.
Brian Persson (07:38)
Yeah, maybe. don't recall. yeah, it was, it was, makes sense. Let's go and do this. And, and we just jumped down into our first condo. I had a tiny bit of property management experience at that point, but really I, ⁓ the property I had at that point was five hours away and managed by family, more or less. and friends. So I didn't really have any property management experience at that point. So even our first condo was like going in blind on property management.
Jessilyn Persson (08:08)
Yep. Or even, well, I guess you had some real estate experience and I had bought real estate, but it was like personal purchase. It wasn't like for renting out. Right. And so, yep, jumped in with zero experience on Massad.
Brian Persson (08:22)
Yeah, and then when we went into Sweeted Properties, we actually found one Sweeted Property that we really, really liked and we went, wow, this works. Refinanced our entire house and bought three more almost immediately afterwards. So it was like, hey, that first thing really worked. And then just like literally put all of our resources behind that one thing and created a total of four of them.
Jessilyn Persson (08:48)
Yeah, sometimes, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And I'm sure we've talked about this before. And while we had condos and a single family home, I mean, I was on mat leave. I think we shared the story, perusing through the local paper when I saw this property in it that was sweeted. And we went and looked at it and we did the numbers and we're like, whoa. Like, but before that, we didn't really conceptualize the concept of sweeted properties, what it meant, what it does. But once we knew and once we knew it worked, click.
We just ran with it and now we're doing the same thing with multifamily.
Brian Persson (09:21)
Yeah. And ⁓ also to dial the audience in on that one, wasn't along the lines of like, hey, you know, let's get into multifamily. From the time of us deciding to the time of us having our first offer accepted was six months. Yep. Yeah. And that includes all the ramp up time of learning it, like finding partners, getting all the...
you know, the new realtors, because we didn't have commercial realtors at that point. New mortgage brokers, because we didn't have commercial mortgage brokers at that point. So all these new service providers, all these new team members and all the education around it, all in six months. And then we also went through another round of refinancing and ended up creating about, it will soon be about $800,000 of equity that we're going to throw into the multifamily. So.
It wasn't like we started saving when we decided. It was like, where do we have resources? How can we put this into this thing that we want and let's go? Six months later, actually it'll be exactly 10 months from the time we decided to the time we're ⁓ closing on our first multifamily. So it was all rather, rather quick. There was no real waiting period in there.
Jessilyn Persson (10:42)
Yeah, and it wasn't a matter of us going okay. We want to get into multifamily We're gonna learn about it and then maybe buy a property in a year or two It was like no we want to get into multifamily. Here's our goals for the next five years So these are the targets who got a hit in year one two, three four and five.
Brian Persson (10:58)
Yep, we have a five-year plan. I also have like a property to property plan. like one of the things that annoyed you initially in the last like 10 months here ⁓ is I wanted it to outperform our current portfolio, which did, which our current portfolio is doing very, very well. The multifamily market sometimes is very difficult to find something of that caliber. You got to do a lot of
You have have either a lot of money to buy it, renovate it and do all the hoops and tricks that you have to do to get it up to that level. So it was a little bit of a frustration to you because you just wanted to buy a multifamily thing that worked. I was like, nope, here are some metrics. was obsessed. Well, I figured like, why would we ever step backwards? Why would we ever step backwards on
Jessilyn Persson (11:46)
Sure.
Brian Persson (11:52)
on something that really, really works, why would we go lower than that? And sure enough, I think I waited maybe two months more than I, than even I would have liked. I was starting to get antsy. And then we found the property that, that like blew our portfolio out of the water. And not only that, but now in my obsession of trying to think this stuff out all the time, I am seeing so much more potential in other properties that can also outperform our portfolio.
Jessilyn Persson (12:23)
You commented that you were starting to get antsy as a tortoise. Imagine a hare. I was literally ready to pull my own hair out. I was like, just buy one already.
Brian Persson (12:30)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well,
like you said, you're getting better and I'm getting better. So the hare and the tortoise are rubbing off on each other.
Jessilyn Persson (12:43)
I pushed it out and said, it'll happen when it's meant to happen. It'll happen when it's meant to happen. I just got it wet. When we're ready, we'll do it.
Brian Persson (12:54)
Well, and I passed that property. I've I've shown that property to a number of seasoned multifamily investors and they're like, I hate to tell you, Brian, but like you you have like an exceptional property here. You might be like disappointed into the future because you're not going to find anything quite like it.
Jessilyn Persson (13:11)
And you will, we know you will. Because we just now kind of know what we're looking for. And I find like, again, when we're talking about be obsessed, when we figure out something that we feel is going to work for us, we just get obsessed. I just remember back in, I think it was 2017, you sat down and you looked at our mortgage, what was left. It was coming up for renewal in October. And you're like, oh, if we could make a payment, a lump sum payment now, and then a lump sum payment.
after it's renewed, because you're allowed only so much per year and per term, we'd be like, I think it was two months payments off of being fully mortgage free. And I remember looking at you going, well, that sounds like a good idea. Here, I got some money, put it on now, make the next payment, renew it, put it on again. And we did it. And then we were fine. ⁓
The thing is when we understood that concept and what it gave us, we just both jumped all in, obsessed, you know, within probably four weeks total, we had put on, I don't know, think it was over $60,000 between the two payments to just like, because our goal at that time was like, let's pay off our mortgage.
Brian Persson (14:20)
tremendous amount of money and but like you said we were obsessed and yeah when you get obsessed like that you don't you don't feel the squeeze or the pain of what you're going through like and when you're not like it can when you're not obsessed it can feel like a grind doing the exact same thing I know I said the grind is in the money but or the money's in the grind but the grind
of obsession is where the money is. If you're just doing it because you think it's a good idea but you're really not behind it, it's gonna feel like quite painful.
Jessilyn Persson (14:54)
It's feel like work. You're gonna wanna give up. You're gonna wanna quit. You might even quit. And you just don't get that end result and then you think like, it didn't work. Well, no, it just wasn't your thing or you weren't obsessed enough about it.
Brian Persson (15:08)
And don't hear us wrong, even when you're obsessed, you will want to quit. There are periods where I'm like, what the heck are we doing? Why are we putting all this effort in? then I remember the future that we're living into and that obsession, the whole obsession, the reason why I even got obsessed in the first place. And then I'm like, yeah, that's it. And then it's much easier to take on that work that you maybe
five seconds ago, didn't want to do, and you just get obsessed again and you're right back to it.
Jessilyn Persson (15:43)
Oh yeah, I mean I countless times I've been obsessed with things in my life, including when I decided I wanted to become an author. Okay, well in less than three months I wrote my book. That took longer to get it through process and published, three months. So when people ask, it's like, I kind of struggle. Like, well, how long did it take you? I'm like, oh.
How do I say this politely? Because it takes most people on average a year. like, ⁓ I condensed it into three months because I had a unrealistic timeline I put up myself and I wanted to get it done before I started a new contract and I just cranked it out. Right, but I got obsessed about it. Not everyone necessarily does that. And then I kind of questioned it's like, okay, do you really want it? Or is it kind of a nice to have? Because if it's just a nice to have and you don't really want it, are you giving it your best anyways?
Brian Persson (16:32)
Yeah, is it just a thing you're going to do or is it something that you cannot live without? I don't mean water or air, but when you get obsessed, you literally will feel like you can't live without whatever thing that you're focused on.
Yeah, for us it's like money or real estate primarily, which then generates the money and the life that we want. So in the end, the life is what we're obsessed about, but the real estate is the method. So we focus on the journey of real estate and that provides everything else for us in our life.
Jessilyn Persson (17:08)
Yeah, I mean, we've both been obsessed at times with ⁓ personal development or developing ourselves, education courses, depending on what we're looking to study at any necessarily given time. Like, of course, we jumped in both into real estate together, not just the investing side, but like the learning of it. And then over COVID, we both jumped into like,
master type coaching on money mindset and getting certified there and just really understanding that for ourselves, which then we knew we could share with others. And I just find anything like when you decided to get your dealing rep exempt market license, it was like, you can't think about it. But then when it was decided, you just click, you start studying and doing what you had to do to get your license. ⁓ And then the same thing when I decided, you know, on my spiritual journey, I was kind of like, I read a book and then I was
That is all I did for a year and I was like, this is amazing. Just finding different books.
Brian Persson (18:08)
So that was the interesting part. for me anyway, because it was one of the probably most dramatic shifts of what you were focusing on in your life that I came across. it showed up as obsession. was literally one day you're just like project manager working away, you know, aiming for her money. And then all of a sudden like, so what do you think about crystals? And I'm like, what?
Yeah, and then like for two months it was just conversations about crystals and spirits and like a universe and everything.
Jessilyn Persson (18:45)
or deaf and like it's just everything's spiritual because again I was like it was my time to be like what is this world because I didn't really focus on it before and I mean it didn't care to it was just not in my interest and then when I did peak my interest I was like ⁓ absorb absorb absorb like how many books can I read can I take courses can I and I just want to learn so much about it just because I loved it
Brian Persson (19:06)
Yeah, yeah. And very similar to me on wealth strategies. Like I didn't crush it all in two months, but like every time I come across a new wealth strategy, I don't just kind of topically go into it. I usually crush the whole strategy. In fact, I, and then I go out and I find experts who do it and I'm usually peppering them with questions where they, where the eventually they'll just kind of stop and go like,
I don't even know where you're coming up with these questions. And like, no one has ever asked me these questions before. And it's because I didn't like just, I didn't hear the topic and then like, that seems interesting. It was a deep dive, understand it right to the bottom and then make sure that it'll either work or not work for our life. And more often than not, we actually implement most of the strategies that I come across because they always make sense. I mean, why would you not implement a wealth strategy?
Jessilyn Persson (19:58)
Yeah, no, I remember watching you do that. I think first and foremost, well, I guess obviously real estate, but then like what I really watched you studying something was the exempt market. But then I found when you decided, let's say like something I'll hear and I'm like, yeah, that sounds good. I might read it very topically and be like, sounds like a good idea here, You don't pass it off to you, but you go like in depth deep. And I watched you do that with...
The Smith maneuver, you were gifted a book, you read it front to back, understood it inside and out. And then you did the same thing with Infinite Banking. You were given a book front to back, inside and out. And you reached out, like you said, to people who are in that industry and understand that world. And you just ask question after question after question to see how we could incorporate that into our wealth strategy and our life. But also for our clients, like if it's a good...
option or a good tool for our clients, you will recommend it for them as well. And I really appreciate how you dig in because what I might think is a good idea, I don't know the details of what it entails and what it looks like and what the outcome is. So I can't speak to it at that level. So I appreciate and support that you do that. That is the hair or the tortoise who can just read it all and understand it all and take the time to find the right people to ask the questions.
Try it ourselves, like you said, more often than not, we incorporate this into our wealth strategy somewhere. Give it a go, because if we're going to recommend it or suggest it to our clients, we want to have walked that path first and being able to speak to it.
Brian Persson (21:34)
Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, you got to walk the talk. If you're going to recommend this, especially if you're in a business like we are and we're helping people create their wealth. If you're not creating wealth in the same way that you're helping your clients create wealth, you're basically a fake. And ⁓ we've seen this in the financial industry tons where you have financial advisors or whoever it is that ⁓
basically don't know how to manage money and they, yet they're, they're helping other people manage their, their wealth, right? So for us, it's a, it's a very core belief that we do, we walk, we walk it first, understand it, and then we will recommend it if it works for us or, or if we fully understand it and can see how it will, will work for other people. But we won't ever recommend it if we haven't done it ourselves.
Jessilyn Persson (22:27)
No, I mean, the same thing happened with multifamily. We are going to have partners and we have partners who are interested in investing with us on our multifamily deals. But we had already decided right off the get go, the first one was ours, 100 % ours. So if there's any mistakes, any huge learning curves, we were going to absorb that first. So then when the next one came along, we could speak to it clearly.
Brian Persson (22:50)
Yeah, and not only that, but not risk anybody else's wealth. At that point, it's our wealth at risk. And in the end, it worked out really well for us because our obsession has allowed us to carry us through any of the problems. And not only that, but the money we've lost has been made up for in education. And we've never made the same mistake twice. And we, well, except for that one.
suite that I moved in three people in one day. Twice.
Jessilyn Persson (23:24)
But that was not a financial mistake. actually was a gain for.
Brian Persson (23:28)
I was just a hair puller and a like, why did I do this mistake? short of like some of those mistakes, you know, we've never ever replicated them and we, that's a core belief is to like get the mistakes under our belt so no one else has to experience them. And at that point we can go out and we can help other people and ourselves build true wealth.
Jessilyn Persson (23:50)
Absolutely. So we're going to wind this down, wrap it up if you will. What is the most important takeaway from what we discussed today? I'd say again, mine is when you make a decision to do whatever it is you want to do, go all in or don't waste your time.
Brian Persson (24:08)
Mine is just ask yourself how much of my thoughts is this going to consume and if it's not 100 % like if you don't think that you're going to think about this all the time, probably not for you. Go find a different path where you know like you're going to be obsessed about thinking about whatever you're trying to attack.
Jessilyn Persson (24:29)
Thanks so much for tuning in. Listen for more real estate investing stories in the next episode of the Life by Design podcast.
Brian Persson (24:36)
Before we go, don't forget to visit WeekendWealth.ca to take our quiz and discover what type of real estate investor you are. We release new episodes every two weeks, so be sure to hit the subscribe button on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for joining us on this journey to create your life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (24:53)
Thanks again for listening, it's been a pleasure being with you today.