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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 (00:00)
Welcome to the Life by Design Podcast, where Jessilyn and Brian Persson struggling to align your financial goals or confidently invest in real estate as a couple.
Brian Persson (00:18)
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 (00:35)
In episode 48, we talked about how you live what you learn. Knowing what we know now. Today, we're going to talk about what we would have done differently. And so, rolling right in here, the first thing we would have done is we would have gone bigger sooner. So we've shared our stories on different episodes where in 2017, Brian came home from work and said he can't handle any more properties. And that's when...
I signed him up to take ⁓ an investment course or work, with Go Alongside ⁓ Real Estate Investment Network to just expand his network and his access to knowledge and what's possible. And that's when he came home and realized he could do a lot more than he realized.
Brian Persson (01:25)
Yeah. You don't know what you don't know. That's really what it came down to. So when I got into the room full of people who are already doing it and already much, much further down the path that I was and realizing how easy it seemed to them, you go, okay. Like, you know what? Maybe I can do this too. And ⁓ I definitely wouldn't have got there without those people and them sharing their stories and showing me like there's a bigger, better path out there.
Jessilyn Persson (01:56)
Yeah. And I mean, that's, that was one of the, think the hard lessons we learned in real estate about how we can manage more. But once we got over that hurdle through life since then, there's been times where both you and I have had a lot on our plate, not necessarily at the same time and went just like, I'm like done, stressed to the max, can't do anymore. And then we'll usually sit down and chat together. And I know one more recent ones with me and you chatted to me and you're like, listen, Jess.
sometimes it's about perspective. Let's look at the situation and check out your perspective from where you're in this box. And then I'll show you what I see outside the box. And then you can take it from there. And I was able to just kind of release, let go and realize it wasn't as bad as maybe I, cause when you're in it, that's where the struggle is when you're in it. And when I pulled myself out, when you helped me, I was able to see, wait, okay.
I can actually do more and this wasn't white as bad as it seemed.
Brian Persson (03:00)
Yeah, when your emotions are firing, it's really, really difficult to get your head out there, out of those emotions and try and think sort of objectively of the situation. And I find that that's a problem with everybody in the situation that you were talking about. There's a subjective experience, like what am I feeling and how do I think this is acting upon me? And then there's the objective experience.
where you tell me all your problems about this particular situation that was going on. like, well, actually, this is the way that it really is, right? And then that allows you to kind of just see it from a different perspective, an objective perspective. And then you end up gaining power over that situation, and then it doesn't affect you anymore.
Jessilyn Persson (03:51)
Exactly.
Brian Persson (03:52)
There was a recent guy I was talking with actually that is kind of more on the subjective objective experience. like sometimes, you know, going big sooner isn't, isn't always what you should be doing. Sometimes you need to, you need to think about like whether or not you should be in real estate or what, type of real estate you should be in. We talk about that a lot. You know, what's your, what's your real estate grit? What's, what's the drive that you have to do real estate, but this, this guy I was talking to, he's doing.
exceptionally well with a particular multifamily building. ⁓ So objectively, he's doing phenomenal. He's showing me all his numbers. He's telling me how he's running it. And subjectively, he hates real estate. So like he thinks it's the worst thing ever. ⁓ you know, maybe he should have thought about that a little bit sooner into his path. But when it comes to that kind of stuff, you know, you should really think about like whether or not
you're actually doing well or whether you think you're doing well. You gotta really get someone out there to reflect on that and see if you're taking an objective perspective versus a subjective perspective.
Jessilyn Persson (05:06)
Right, and I know you talk about maybe waiting a little bit. And I know that's something we kind of learned the hard way is in hindsight, we probably would have waited a little longer to buy a bigger asset. So instead of jump right in and buying only what we could afford, which was a tiny little condo and then another tiny little condo, which we did okay on them. We didn't do fantastic. They're great learning experiences. But in hindsight, had we waited maybe and bought a suede property, which is.
what we specialize in, suite of property and multifamily, we probably would have been more successful with that real estate.
Brian Persson (05:41)
Yeah, we suffered from the same thing that a lot of real estate investors suffer from early on in their investment ⁓ path. It's, know, shiny object. You have only so much capital when you start and condos are that shiny object that allow you to get into real estate sooner than later. But like you said, you know, if we really did it differently, I think we would have saved up a little bit more, had a little bit more patience and bought something a little bit bigger.
And that's where we talk about, you know, it's not about timing the market. It's about the right property, the right place in, in the right, for the right price and the right strategy. we went in with a couple of those check, check boxes off, checked off. But, the, thing that we failed on was probably the location. ⁓ just, just bought kind of in the wrong area and, and our first condo, we just lost, ⁓ lost a little bit of money on it. but.
On the, on the sale. Yeah. Like years down the road. Well, and actually when I work out the math, think, I think we've talked about this before, but when I work out the math, ended up making about 6 % on, the total deal over the 10 or 12 years. So you divide that it's like half a percent a year, but guess what? We didn't lose money. Not a great real estate investment, but ⁓ imagine now if we had waited just a little longer and bought something like one of our suited properties, then Matt, that money would have.
Jessilyn Persson (06:58)
That's true.
Brian Persson (07:09)
would have multiplied numerous times over those 10 years. So that's kind what we're talking about is, you know, maybe, maybe wait, go a little bit bigger. And that way you're not like, kind of retroactively trying to trying to make up for for some losses.
Jessilyn Persson (07:28)
Absolutely. And I think part of that finds us rolling into our second takeaway, which is find mentors and training. So we were investing in real estate for eight years before we found the Real Estate Investment Network that I signed you up for. ⁓ think about that. Eight years, we did real estate on our own, learning our own lessons by mistakes, literally trial and error.
We didn't even think about finding a network or a group or mentors or trainers or anyone who could support us. But when we decided to do multifamily last November, we hired a coach first and then bought multifamily.
Brian Persson (08:08)
Yeah, we had already suffered enough bumps and bruises in real estate by that time that we knew we weren't going to do it on our own this time. Yeah. And it is crazy to think, like eight years, we went and didn't have even a group that we belonged to. that's, again, going back to like, you don't know what you don't know. And that's part of why we wanted to put this episode together is we made all these mistakes and we hope you're listening.
and are hearing all the mistakes that we've already made so that you don't have to make those mistakes. And hopefully we're showing you something that you can now know and avoid it. But back then, yeah, we didn't know what we didn't know. And so we walked right through it, unfortunately, into those mistakes.
Jessilyn Persson (08:58)
Yeah, I think we were lucky that in the sense that you and I were on the same page when it came to like real estate and investing because we not only did we not have any kind of a networking group or a support group to help us understand what we're going through, we just decided, hey, let's do real estate and invest in it. But we didn't have any mentors. We didn't have any family who had done it. We didn't have any friends who have done it. So our circle of influence knew nothing about what we were doing.
It was more of like, ⁓ okay, that's cooler. ⁓ wow, that's a lot of debt. are you sure that's the right move? like, you know, you get a lot of naysayers and they meanwhile, they're trying to protect you. But if they haven't done it, their advice is not worth listening to. And that's why we recommend getting yourself into rooms full of like-minded people as early as possible.
Brian Persson (09:51)
Yeah, our family and numerous other people around us, because they hadn't done it, know, unfortunately humans, when we're in an ignorant state, like, and we don't have the knowledge, we tend to fear it. And so because of that, if you are surrounding yourself with people who are not doing what you're doing, you tend to have a lot of fear around you because they don't understand what you're doing. And so they just naturally distrust it. And,
Even if they don't distrust it and they trust you, they just simply don't understand it. Cause I know I had a conversation with my sister recently and we were telling her about the multifamily that we had taken on and I threw out a number and it had a million in it. And she, she was like, what? Like, how is that even possible? And, ⁓ but she didn't, she didn't see the years of other real estate that we were building up to, to get to that million, million plus dollar property where, you know, for her.
It didn't make any sense. She couldn't even conceive the fact that you can buy a million and a $1.6 million property in this particular case. She couldn't conceive it because for her, she'd never done it. So even though she understood that we were doing it, she didn't understand what we were actually doing.
Jessilyn Persson (11:14)
Yeah. Yeah. And that can be hard if that's what your circle of influence is, is people who just don't understand. So they can never get to your level. And it then makes it kind of awkward or uncomfortable sometimes to talk to them about it. Cause firstly, you know, they don't understand what you're talking about. So it's not going to really go anywhere. They can't celebrate with you cause they don't understand the win of it. Cause they don't understand the whole concept of it. So then you just kind of keep to yourself, which is okay. Like keep things to yourself, but it's really nice to also share.
when you're going through things like this and celebrating your wins. So that's why I say, I think it was great that you and I are on the same page, because I know a lot of couples aren't. And it's one partner generally who's climbing the investment chain train ⁓ of real estate and the other one who's usually heading the sand, doesn't get it, creating the fear, putting up the roadblocks and it can make it even harder.
Brian Persson (12:06)
Yeah, and I think that's where mentors and training come in, is that education goes both ways, right? Sometimes you will find that you need to go out and get the education, and sometimes you might find that you are the one educating. When it comes to your partners or family, whoever it is, they might not understand right away, but have enough casual conversations with them that they start to understand. They might not ever do real estate with you, but...
they will at least remove the fear of what you are doing. So, your mom and your dad obviously are, they want the best for you. They're gonna try and protect you as best as they can. they might like naysay you against real estate. But if you have the conversations with them so that they understand what you're doing, then it just puts them at ease and it takes away the fear.
Jessilyn Persson (13:00)
Absolutely. And along that same vein, something I would have done sooner is work on my money mindset. And I know I've talked about this plenty of times where I didn't come from money. And so I had a poverty mindset. It was a save, save, save. Don't spend, don't spend. And I carried that into my early forties before I actually took a weekend course, all strictly on money mindset. And you know, where you dig into the root of where it comes, your ancestors, your upbringing, your family, your history, and you look at what you're doing today and are you repeating what-
you learned from the past and is it serving you today? And when you walk through all that and you actually overcome it, and like I did, I became mindset of abundance, it's a huge shift, a huge shift in how I saw money, how I made money, how much money flows into me, what I do with my money. But I mean, I was in my early, early, early 40s when I got there. Like imagine I could have done that when I was in my 30s or even my 20s, right? So I would highly recommend.
working on your money mindset, whether that's just finding books, a course, a mentor, whatever it is, lots of information on the internet, there are ways to learn about it. And I would highly suggest you work on that before you work on any kind of real estate investing.
Brian Persson (14:10)
Yeah, exactly. Real estate investing is a skill that you can learn, but it's not ⁓ what I'm going to call a transformation, like money mindset. Yeah. So you when you work on your money mindset, you are fundamentally changing who you are. And and that will show up in real estate that will show up in your family that will show up in like all kinds of different places and affect your life on a universal level, rather than just like
real estate and money and your wealth. It's super, super important because it's such a ground level concept to work on. Like you said, go find any way which way you can do it, books or people or courses, it will create the groundwork and the foundation for anything you want to build, whether it's real estate or whatever else.
Jessilyn Persson (15:02)
Yeah, and if you can do that with your partner, even better. I know we took that course together. And even though we came from different backgrounds and we had different money mindsets, even back then, ⁓ we were able to at least understand where each other came from and why it was the way it was and the way it looked for us. And then we could support each other going forward as we're building and changing our mindset. And we bring that into our household. We speak openly about money.
kids books on money, how to make it, how to invest it. And it's a common conversation in our household because we want them to have the abundance mindset and the growth and the investment mindset and realize they can have anything they want in life, but they got to make the smart choices to get there.
Brian Persson (15:49)
Yeah, and you might not think that your kids are listening to you, but they're listening to you. So be careful ⁓ about what you say. ⁓ If you do have a money mindset where maybe you have some poverty around your mindset and you do need to go to a course or you need to personally read books to improve that, do so because you might think you're hiding it from your kids, but guess what? They're learning from you.
And ⁓ the more broader and more robust of a money mindset that you can have will translate down to your kids.
Jessilyn Persson (16:29)
Yep. They are watching you. And that's going to roll into our third takeaway, which is protect your money. ⁓ Regardless of how you look at money, there's a few things that we've done that we, I mean, I get lessons learned over the years we were in and on our own, but one thing we love to share and we probably would have done sooner had we known was to be okay with good debt. I mean, we remortgaged our
house, personal property that we live in, one month shy of being mortgage free. Like firstly, that's how long we waited to remortgage, but also it shows where our mindset was. Like, like we're kind of raised, pay off your mortgage, be debt free. We were there. And then we're, then we learned some new tools and new, new ways and went, wait a minute, let's remortgage our house, pull it out, buy some investments and have those pay us.
Brian Persson (17:25)
And nowadays I can't imagine, I think we'll probably go to the grave with a ton of debt. Like good debt though, like just like you were saying. know, good, and just for the audience out there, good debt is basically debt that you've used to generate an income or an investment of some sort. So the debt is both covered and it is paying you in some way. ⁓ Bad debt is anything where like you now have to actually put more effort and
and time in to pay off that debt where it is not covered by anything and it is basically it's a liability and not an asset. So for us, we took the money from our primary residence, went out and bought three different properties. And through doing that, the whatever extra interest that we had on the debt that we had borrowed back from our primary residence was covered by the rental properties. ⁓
Even though we would have been debt free and not had a primary mortgage, because we bought three real estate investments, our actual expenses went down. Just like it, just like as if we had paid off the mortgage, even though we were now paying even more on our mortgage. So we have that equalization of, of like our personal expenses, but then we have now all this other
assets, all these other assets growing and paying us as well.
Jessilyn Persson (18:53)
Yeah, and we used pretty much the same 200,000 by almost all our real estate. We recycled the money. We took it out of our house. We bought properties. We refinanced those, took it out of those houses. We bought more properties and we just keep doing it even into our multifamily. Yeah.
Brian Persson (19:11)
Now that 200,000 that we initially invested, it turned into a $2 million portfolio. And now it is growing and now we're changing that into about a $4 million portfolio. And in about six months from now of the recording of this podcast, we will be recycling that again and it will turn into an even larger portfolio on the next purchase. you can just keep.
moving that dollar forward through some real estate techniques and we won't get into them in this episode but that's one of the things I love about real estate is that you can take a dollar and you can keep multiplying it over time until your dollar is now $10 that can be used towards creating $100 which can then be used to creating $1,000 and so on. One of the biggest powers of real estate.
Jessilyn Persson (20:06)
Yep, that same 200,000 now worth four mil, right? And like you said, we'll reinvest it in about six months and probably closer to six mil. And we just keep using, we're not like working harder, earning more money to buy more real estate from a job perspective. Like if it's a nine to five, our work is going into our real estate to pull out and keep recycling that money. So we don't have to work harder to make more money.
Brian Persson (20:34)
Yeah, and I kind of feel like, I mean, some of this is based on experience, but now that we are more experienced real estate investors, it feels like we're actually working less to, to, producing more. So eventually it won't happen to you right, right on day one, but eventually that dollar will keep multiplying for further and further and further into the future where it will get easier, right? The same amount of effort that
used to generate $1 for you is now going to generate $100 for you.
Jessilyn Persson (21:04)
Yep,
and the sooner you can make your dollars work for you, the better. Absolutely. So I'm gonna roll into our key takeaway. Mine would actually be money mindset, just because I'm so passionate about it, just because the huge shift I had from working on it, not just the shift from working on it, but my life that has unfolded since I worked on it over the last six years since I've done that course.
Brian Persson (21:08)
Yep, time is your best friend.
Jessilyn Persson (21:33)
and just the magnitude and abundance that's come my way from what I'm gonna call one simple thing. Of course it wasn't simple, because to dig into the root of your money can actually be ⁓ very.
Brian Persson (21:45)
difficult
and challenging and maybe confronting.
Jessilyn Persson (21:49)
But very well worth it.
Brian Persson (21:51)
Yeah. My takeaway is just don't beat yourself up. You don't know what you don't know and that just create yourself a habit of lifelong learning so that you can just constantly discover what you need to know.
Jessilyn Persson (22:06)
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 (22:13)
Before you 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 that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Thank you for joining us on this journey to create your life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (22:30)
Thanks again for listening. It's been a pleasure being with you today.