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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: [00:00:10] Welcome to the Life by Design Podcast, we are your hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson. Are you and your partner looking to align your financial goals and build wealth together? Have you ever wondered what might be stopping you from confidently investing in real estate or growing your wealth as a couple? Or why it feels so hard to get on the same page financially?
Brian Persson: [00:00:30] That's exactly why we created this podcast and the 'Riches, Relationships, and Real Estate' program to help couples like you invest confidently and achieve both your financial and relationship goals. If you're curious to learn more, head over to discoverlifebydesign.ca/wealth and download our free guide,'The 3 Common Mistakes Couples Make When Building Their Wealth'. Let's start building the life you deserve, together.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:59] All right, today's topic is 'your first steps to shift from a scarcity to wealth mindset'. I wanted to chat about this one because I've had several people reach out to me lately through social media, DMs, emails, after they've seen some of our posts that we do on mindset, and they're like, but how do you do it? So I thought about it and I'm like, instead of replying back one by one, let's do a full podcast so we can reach our entire audience and have them share it for those who are interested in shifting their mindset from one of scarcity to one of wealth and abundance.
Brian Persson: [00:01:36] I think a really great place for this podcast to start is to talk about our own personal experience and make people understand that you might have had a mindset of scarcity in the past, but that doesn't mean that it's going to ever leave you or that you can't change it. So let's just talk about our mindsets and how we've evolved over time. Do you want to go first?
Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:00] Sure. As I've shared openly before, I grew up in poverty. We didn't have much money growing up, but we had a farm, and so we worked hard to have everything we did. The way I learned it were things like money was scarce, you had to work really hard for your money. It didn't stretch far, so you had to save as much as you can to stretch it for that rainy day. There are times we had to go without certain things because there was no money to provide for that. As I grew older and moved away and went through university and into my first few corporate jobs, I still carried that. Thinking, it didn't matter what I made, I had to save it. Then we're talking a couple decades later, where we'd had a sizable real estate portfolio. We both had incredible incomes from our careers, money set aside, putting away for our kids, and I still thought I couldn't spend.
Brian Persson: [00:03:04] I think that's a great thing to do, is contrast it. You have this idea of poverty in your head and you're saving everything. I saw it in you because you would go on these roller coasters. You knew you had money, but something in the back of your head said, I didn't have money. There would be these roller coasters through our finances where you would just be spending a whole bunch of money because something triggered that you had money, and then all of a sudden that scarcity mindset would kick in and you would lock down every single account and not spend anything. For me, I was kind of confused. It's like, why can't this be an even keel ship where the spending is consistent and the income is consistent, let's keep it like that. But part of that was your mindset, and that roller coaster developed out of it.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:05] Now, to be clear, earlier in our marriage, when it was the big spend, I was never a big spender earlier. I would scrimp and save and frugal and I'd go for deals. Everywhere I could, I just wouldn't save. I wouldn't spend on clothes much for me or nails, anything like that. The big spend generally would be, I'd save and be like, I got enough to buy a house. Then we'd spend it, and then I had nothing. I'm looking at an account with nothing. Yes, I had an asset, but that's not the way my mind saw things. Plus assets take time before they're starting to be producing. Save again, buy another asset. Then we got to a point where it was steady, more money, more savings and higher income, because of course that grew with age and advancements and shifts in our careers. Even then I was still, because I know for the longest time I just always wanted to treat myself and get my nails done. I would watch so many women do these things and I'd be like, how do they afford it? They don't have a job like I do. If they had a job, like some of them were stay at home moms. Obviously it was a part of the mentality around how they viewed money and how I viewed money. It wasn't until my 40s that we reviewed our finances and we're finally like, Jess, we can absolutely afford for you to go get your nails done.
Brian Persson: [00:05:31] In our 40s, that's where the traction was really starting on our money mindset, too. We were in a lot of different circles, we were around a lot of different people that had much more abundance mindsets starting in that time. The income perhaps wasn't changing, at least what we were drawing out of the company wasn't changing a whole lot. All of a sudden, though, you were able to justify and get your head around the fact that you can do your nails and you can do all these other things. So the question is, in contrast, compared to how you felt before spending money on things like nails and now, does it feel like you're breaking the bank even though it's the same transaction?
Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:23] No. I also have a different understanding and appreciation for valuing myself and my wants and my needs. If I'm spending $60 a month on nails, whereas before I felt I'd have to save. It's like 60 bucks which, for us, is barely a lunch out. Where we would do lunch out, we made lunch a priority for us back when the kids were younger and we didn't even hesitate on that. It's just how you view things, and it was a lot about myself. It's like, do I deserve to get my nails done? It's like, hell yeah, you work hard, girl. But it took, I'm not sure how many months I went before I fully accepted it. To be like, this is okay. This is part of the budget. That's the other thing is, we budgeted it in and reviewed it. It didn't break the bank at all, we still have lots of money, we're still making good money and saving and investing, but we also have that now to do it. If I was 20 years younger, I didn't have the same income and I didn't have the same investments and money flowing in, so I wouldn't have thought of nails as a, I wouldn't say they're a necessity along the lines of food and bills and stuff, but it would have been just like, that's not where my priorities lied.
Brian Persson: [00:07:46] True, but I think if you could contrast yourself between today and your 20 year old self, even if you had lower income. You think about the value that you have instilled in yourself and your money mindset and all the different mental tricks and things that we've learned over the years to get you moving around money. I think your 20 year old self would probably take some different actions, like maybe getting nails. Because you know your hair and your nails attract people. You go into crowds and you're a speaker. We've seen speakers that get up on stage and their hair is not done, and I don't know what their nails look like, but they just don't have that same power and that same presence and output. Part of that is just a matter of how they value themselves and how they think about money ultimately and where they're putting it. So I think if your 20 year old self got advice from you in your current self, you might have made different decisions. That's really what I want to contrast here is, what did it look like before and what does it look like now?
Brian Persson: [00:09:04] For me, my scarcity was actually in comfort. I came from a middle class family, everything was always comfortable. My parents didn't have jobs here and there, there was a couple little rough patches, but ultimately it wasn't all that bad. Then for me, my career did very well very early. I was lucky enough to start my tech career in the dot-com boom. They were just throwing money at people, and I got a lot of really good experience really early on. Then I found a job after the whole dot-com busted and nobody had jobs for six months. I managed to get into a really good company that treated me very well, and I advanced very quickly. Then the golden handcuffs obviously went on and I just lived comfortably. So comfort was my scarcity mindset, and then to get out of that, it was super difficult because what's the opposite of comfortable? Uncomfortable. Guess what mindset uncomfortableness is, that's abundance mindset. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:10:18] At that time you thought, we have everything we need. We got a good house, we got a good working car, family, we can afford our bills, we make good money. Why do we need to do anything more? Why do we need to grow and advance and build our wealth? You were just very status quo, comfortable, didn't want to move.
Brian Persson: [00:10:35] Don't get me wrong, a lot of people, a lot of my friends even, would have loved to be in my position. The hampering part of it was that it blinded me from seeing that there was anything else, that I could even do anything else. Never mind putting money aside, that I could even be anybody else. Now today, I look at it and it's like, who do I need to be next year to achieve my goal? Who do I need to be in the next five years to achieve my goals? It's not even a matter of money anymore, it's a matter of, who am I? I can't stay static anymore. So there's different types of scarcity and abundance. For me, it was very much a comfort level. Now we regularly practice being uncomfortable in all kinds of situations.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:11:32] I speak to a lot of people who, when I ask how they're doing their finances, and you can tell they're comfortable. They don't need anything more, they have enough to retire on, or so they think. But that is scary also, to be in that space because you realize, they don't think bigger. They don't think they can have bigger because they got everything they need. Growth doesn't happen there. Our first takeaway was, acknowledge your limiting beliefs. Of course, we acknowledged ours and it did take time. This didn't happen overnight, this happened over months and years. One way to acknowledge your limiting beliefs is to review your upbringing. How were you raised around money? What did your parents believe? Because that's most likely where you inherited your original beliefs.
Brian Persson: [00:12:27] The biggest question to ask yourself about your upbringing is, does it serve you anymore? Is your parents ideal lifestyle, their finances and the way that they're living their life, the way that you want to live your life? If it is, replicate their life.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:46] But remember, you may not grow there.
Brian Persson: [00:12:50] Some people have very successful parents and maybe it is truly valuable to replicate their life. I would assert that most people do not want to be their parents.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:03] I would agree to that.
Brian Persson: [00:13:05] Our parents, everybody's parents if you ask me, always wants their kids to be better than they are.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:12] They always want more for their kids, absolutely.
Brian Persson: [00:13:13] They see their life as the bare minimum, and so the bare minimum for their kids is not what they want for their kids' life. They want the bare minimum, plus. Your parents might be successful, but they also want you to outdo them.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:30] Yes, I agree.
Brian Persson: [00:13:32] In terms of acknowledging limiting beliefs, I truly believe, and I've seen it so many times in myself and in others, that the number one step for changing whatever you have in your mind, whatever mindset you have, is just knowing you have it. Just looking at yourself in the mirror and going, I am this person. It's not a positive person, often. Maybe you're angry. If you're an angry person, then just understanding that you're an angry person is 80% of the battle right there, and completely accepting that fact. If you have a poverty mindset and you just can't figure out why you can't make more money, or you can't invest more, or you're spending habits are all over the place, look at yourself in the mirror and completely accept the person who is overspending. By just doing that alone, you've probably solved 80% of your problem.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:14:32] From there, your mind will start shifting and moving forward in the direction you want. But you're right, you got to acknowledge and accept who you are now so you can move into who you want to be. Let's roll into takeaway number two, which is to educate yourself and reframe your money mindset. Learn about finances and wealth building strategies, because the more informed you are, the more confident you'll feel about growing your wealth. I think we know from years of experience, all the education we've gone in, every time we learn something new, we become that much more confident in the choices we're making and the steps we're taking to build our wealth and our legacy.
Brian Persson: [00:15:15] One of the big takeaways here in 'educate yourself' is continually educating yourself. One of the traps, I guess you could say, of personal development seminars, like Tony Robbins if you go to one of his weekends, is that you get all pumped up, you're super excited for life, and then you go back to work on Monday. The problem with that is that, what's carrying you forward through all of it? Even though you might have a big 'aha' moment. I know for us, me especially, we have gone through some personal development seminar weekends. Amazing experiences, but I can guarantee you that only a small portion of what I ever learned on that weekend actually carried forward with me because I never put it into practice, never consistently surrounded myself by it going forward, past that weekend.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:16:14] Like you said, we get home, Monday comes around and it's back to work.
Brian Persson: [00:16:17] You get just a sliver of it.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:16:19] Now you're stressed about work, you got the kids' school, daily life, daily routine kicks in and you just don't have the time or the capacity to work on all that. But if you continually update yourself and educate yourself as well as align yourself with like-minded individuals, people who can hold you accountable, they can help you push through that concept of 'I don't have time' or just forgetting because you get busy in the whirlwind of everyday life.
Brian Persson: [00:16:49] Your mindset is going to want to snap its way right back to where it was. Humans are exceptionally resilient creatures, but the problem with resilience is that resilience is just a return to the previous state. It's great to be resilient and not go lower than any current state you might be in, but if you're looking for growth you need to be more than resilient. Otherwise, if you're not practicing it and you're not getting out there and getting your mindset continually expanding, it is going to go right back to where it was.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:25] When it comes to reframing your money mindset, you can do this in several ways, but one thing that we've been stressing more so lately is that, money is everywhere, it's abundant and everywhere. As soon as you acknowledge and accept that concept, you will see it everywhere. I know one of the little activities we encourage our listeners to do, and our clients as we go through is, when you're driving around, you're out and about just doing your normal day, whether that's dropping kids off, getting groceries, driving to work, look for the money. You'll see all these fancy cars, all these new buildings, all these new stores, full parking lots which means people are shopping, people packed in theaters, packed in events, that's all money. When you start to see it you go, it is everywhere. You deserve to be wealthy, we all deserve to be wealthy. Just because you get a promotion or a second, third, fourth stream of income or make more money, doesn't mean there's lack for others. It just means you've chosen, you've put it into action, and you're now being rewarded for the choices you made.
Brian Persson: [00:18:41] That exercise comes from one of our mentors, Grant Cardone. That's exactly why he encourages his students to do that, is because people think, I can't make a dollar, a dollar is super hard to make. He just wants you to look out there and understand that, if we're in our house, the paint on the wall, the pictures on the wall, the flooring, all the labor, all the materials, all the intensity of building this house and everything that came behind it, is worth so much more money than the house itself. There's a huge amount that you can grasp out of any portion of whatever you're driving around and looking at. The car itself you're driving in, huge amounts of money behind that car. How much of it can you grab? How much of that money can you take for yourself and earn in some job or position or business to get a sliver of all those billions and trillions of dollars that are out there when you're driving around looking at it.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:19:51] I know I've shared this before, in the news there's always the scare. That's part of the news' goal I think, is just to scare people. They'll talk about the economy and how prices have gone up, which I know they have, but for rent, for food, for utilities, for all this and gas and how people can't afford it and how it's just crushing them. Then I'm going to some higher end stores to buy a couple things and I see lineups and I'm like, they're not crushed.
Brian Persson: [00:20:22] The news sells on negativity, the news would not do very well on positivity. Which is an interesting contrast between real estate investor rooms and the news. The news is going on about how the economy is going to come apart and everything's going to be a disaster, and then at the exact same time, you go into a real estate investor room and the conversation is, here's what's happening to the economy, how do we adjust? If you had the news in that room, the conversation would be, oh my god sell everything you have, move out of the city.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:05] That would be in high times and low.
Brian Persson: [00:21:07] Exactly, so it's a very interesting difference between a positive abundance mindset, which I've never not experienced in a real estate investor room. They're much more, how do we manage this and not, oh my god I need to go hide under a rock somewhere.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:21:27] This is coming, how do we change our way of doing, or what we're doing, or what we're investing in, to shift it so we continue the abundance? Rolling in to take away three, you want to take small, consistent actions. We've talked about this many times, but you want to start with manageable steps like automating your savings or setting small investment goals. Consistency compounds into bigger results over time. I know we've spoke on that in a previous episode, but having a big, audacious goal can be fun and exciting, but rarely do we just go for it and get anywhere because it's too big, it's overwhelming and we shut down. But if you break that down into smaller goals that, underneath, have actionable tasks and steps, I can promise you step by step, day over day, and continual action gets you to that big audacious goal.
Brian Persson: [00:22:25] Don't get us wrong, it can be tough to keep that consistency. This is what we were talking about earlier, is that you got to always keep in that growth mindset. You can't just go to the three day weekend and get yourself all revved up on personal development, and then figure you're just going to go back to life. You got to put a couple reps in every single day just to keep yourself moving forward. That's what taking small, consistent actions is about.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:22:53] If you don't have a lot of time on your hands, which I know there are ups and downs when it comes to taking care of kids and family and jobs, one. Just take one action a day, I promise you over a week you suddenly had seven actions. Instead of feeling like you got to do everything today and then you're overwhelmed because suddenly maybe one of your kids is sick and you got to pick them up from school, or you get sick. There's going to be days where you're just gonna be down. So take that downtime when you're down and know the next day you'll pick up an extra step and it will add up.
Brian Persson: [00:23:24] Consistency and practice. Just to give a real world example, I wasn't working out as much as I wanted to because we only have the one little room here for our workout area. You were using it at approximately the time I would have liked to use it, which was right before the kids get up. So I'm like, I don't want to have to work out at 10pm, 11pm, and I really want to work out in the morning because every time I did, it works out better for me. So for three months, I started this by just going to bed earlier. I didn't get up earlier, I just went to bed earlier for three months. Then the next three months I started getting up earlier. I changed my routine ever so slightly, consistently, every single day for pretty well the course of about 6 to 9 months. Nowadays, I get up consistently at 4:30 am, I work out, I meditate, I do my journaling, I even have some extra time, usually, for a couple other activities that I can fit into the morning. What didn't happen was, I didn't just say, one night I'm going to wake up at 4:30, and I just started waking up at 4:30 and working out at 4:30. It would have never happened, it was too large of a shift for me in order for it to make a jump like that overnight.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:52] That's a great point you raise. Everyone's different and they have different modalities for the shifts they want to make. Some people can do bigger jumps, and if you can, great. But if that's not your personality and you know it, don't do the big jump, do the small little bites. If we're talking about, maybe you want to save a little more every month, what does that look like? Maybe it's simply cutting one subscription, whether it be your Netflix or Disney, just one. Don't just suddenly cut them all and you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs going, well this sucks. Cut one, say that's ten bucks for example, start putting that ten bucks away, and then three months later, maybe cut something else or find another path that's going to help you. This way, you won't even notice the $10 cut you made because it's just part of your habit.
Brian Persson: [00:25:37] Again, going back to the point I raised earlier, your mind is going to want to snap back exactly to where it is. If you just burn and raise all the expenses out of your budget, your brain is not going to be able to handle cutting that many expenses all at the same time. So you're just going to snap back right to all the subscriptions that you had before.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:02] But doing one at a time, three months later, your new norm is one less subscription already.
Brian Persson: [00:26:07] If you look at it in the inverse, again, one of our mentors, Jared Gallant, who is the president of Cardone Industries, Grant Cardone's company, he knows if you want to go out there and make $100,000, $200,000 in your business, that's going to be very difficult for you to do if you're just starting. He encourages you, go make $1, and once you've made $1 consistently, make $10 consistently. Then when you do that, up to the 100,000, 200,000, whatever mark you're aiming for. But again, if you just jump from 0 to 100,000, it's going to be very difficult for you.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:26:47] Absolutely. So to recap today's takeaways, the first one is to acknowledge your limiting beliefs. Number two, educate yourself and reframe your money mindset. The third takeaway is, take small consistent actions. Our next topic is going to be how to embrace the challenge of expanding your mindset. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Life by Design Podcast. Before you go, don't forget to visit discoverlifebydesign.ca/wealth and grab your free download, 'The 3 Common Mistakes Couples Make When Building Their Wealth'.
Brian Persson: [00:27:19] We release new episodes every two weeks, so be sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app and join us on this journey to create your life by design.
Jessilyn Persson: [00:27:29] Thanks again for listening, it's been a pleasure being with you today. We're Jessilyn and Brian, and we'll see you next time.