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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 (00:05)
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 (00:14)
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 (00:33)
Today we're gonna talk about how you live what you learn. So a lot of the things we've done in our past, we're gonna walk through to show how we got to where we are and how it helped us create the life we're currently living.
Brian Persson (00:52)
Things from just actions where we leaped when we didn't have a full plan to mentors who we listened to and just did what we heard them doing. ⁓ Everything that we learned, we literally integrated fully into our life.
Jessilyn Persson (01:12)
Yes, so one of, ⁓ think something we hear quite often is, it's never the right time. And we say, do it anyways. Markets go up, interest rates rise and fall, life will always feel too busy, you always will have no time. But if you wait for the perfect conditions, that keeps you stuck. I mean, we see this with real estate investors.
Brian Persson (01:25)
Correct.
Jessilyn Persson (01:40)
who hesitate and miss so many opportunities if they even jump on an opportunity because they're waiting for the stars to align, which they never will. There's always going to be something that's going to be slightly out. So we've realized that wealth is built by those who move forward, even when it's uncomfortable.
Brian Persson (02:02)
Yeah, and there there's a couple sayings in real estate and one of them is it's always the right time to invest in real estate, right? You just need to change your plan you need to change how you how you're going about investing in real estate and I mean like you like you said earlier if you could tie it if you could time the markets or if you're unsure of the markets Well, guess what everybody would be millionaires ⁓ a number of the real estate investor focused realtors here here in our area We we joke a fair bit
about how if you could time the markets and we knew what was coming up, we'd all be high-fiving on beaches in Mexico.
Jessilyn Persson (02:39)
Right. I know that we've made some choices in our real estate that, well, ideally we were planning or in this case with our Saskatoon home, ⁓ which was before you and I met, but you were planning to ride the wave that Edmonton had and you missed the mark.
Brian Persson (03:02)
It was definitely not the right time at that point yet, but I did it anyway. ⁓ Basically, Edmonton had experienced a boom and what generally happens in our area is that there's three cities that sort of ripple through each other and that ⁓ in this particular case, Saskatoon is the last city out of that chain of three cities that ripples through when a boom happens.
So I saw it happen in Edmonton, which is the middle of the two cities. And I ran out to Saskatoon to try and buy a property out there and ended up buying too late, ended up buying at the peak of the market, held the property for 10 years, still did okay on it. not, not nothing phenomenal when it came to comes to real estate standards. But if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have appreciated Saskatoon, which is a market that we're actively looking for.
Multifamily in right now and we also know Saskatoon as well because we've been in that been in the city for a decade so You know was it the right time? Definitely wasn't the right time. Did I lose any money didn't lose any money, but we we still did it anyway
Jessilyn Persson (04:15)
Yeah. And while it may not have been a lottery in real estate terms, like you said, we didn't lose money and you so many lessons learned right from how to because that's the first time you had to manage tenants and put some of those processes in place. And so it was educational. So even though it wasn't a big winner financially, it was that starting point, that jumping point where you got your your feet wet in real estate investing and having tenants.
So I think there are multiple aspects you should look at when you're looking at real estate and your investments, because even if you don't make the money you thought you did, what other things came out of it?
Brian Persson (05:00)
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the goal in real estate is not to lose money, but you know, there, are a lot of benefits to real estate that don't actually equate to a dollar. ⁓ we, we say all the time, our lives, regardless of the money that we've made in real estate would be totally different if we didn't have real estate to, to challenge us to become the people that we are today. And really that's what it comes down to is, is that, ⁓ not only has real estate
done very well financially for us, but it's also molded us and moved us beyond where we could have been if we had not had real estate in our lives, just as people.
Jessilyn Persson (05:42)
Yeah, and I would say I think another awesome move we made was buying condos, which we no longer own. Was it the right time? Who knows? mean, it sounded like the right deals at the time, but in hindsight, like, Edmonton took a dive and then a flat line on condos for years, like probably even like a decade. But we bought...
two condos in that time frame. And again, great educational lessons, learning again how to manage more tenants and some of the rules around that. Condo markets, what that looks like, learning about the areas in the city. Again, were they the big winners for us? No. But we still made a percentage and we didn't lose money.
Brian Persson (06:35)
No, and the rule of thumb here when it comes to real estate is don't buy cheap. Yeah. That's really what, that's really what our mistake was. And when it came to condos is that we had, we had some money to invest. Uh, we looked around, we said, Hey, condos are pretty well the only thing that we're able to invest into. And so we bought a, a condo to get into the real estate market. If we had the knowledge and the experience that we had now, you know, 15 years later.
We definitely would have saved up money and we would have bought something like a sweeted house or, or maybe even just a regular house, something that's a little bit more resellable, something that potentially cash flows a little bit more. And it's not just the cheap sort of maybe not so shiny thing. I don't want to call condos a shiny thing, but that the cheap thing that you can access at that moment with, whatever money you have, take the time, have some patience.
buy a bigger asset that will perform for you better. That's really the lesson we learned.
Jessilyn Persson (07:36)
Yeah, we did, but I don't know if we would have fully learned that lesson if we hadn't bought the condos.
Brian Persson (07:40)
No, we wouldn't have. But thankfully we learned it. So everybody out there doesn't have to learn it. ⁓
Jessilyn Persson (07:48)
That's
right. That's right. And then of course, ⁓ we've now shifted our portfolio slightly again and we're buying multifamily. ⁓ Now the decision we made back in November, like, okay, we're going to shift our goal. This is why we plan that out. And we kind of started really riding that train in January this year and then pulled the trigger on our first offer, our first multifamily in early July.
Brian Persson (08:18)
Yeah. And that's where you can really see that all the experience of what we had experienced over the last 15 years really was starting to add up, right? Where it's never the right time, do it anyway. Well, when we made the pivot to multifamily, we weren't even educated in the space, but we knew that if we didn't get into action around buying multifamily, i.e.
talking to realtors that were commercial realtors, talking to mortgage brokers about commercial mortgages and property managers and everything that all the stuff that we would have needed to do to buy multifamily, we got into action like from day one. Knowing that at some point in the future, we were actually going to buy multifamily and it was a very, very quick turnaround, pretty well about six months between the decision to buy multifamily and the actual first accepted.
Contract on a multifamily building so Really we knew you know, we we could have like analyzed it for years before we ever decided to go into multifamily But in fact when we first started we actually weren't even sure we would have enough money to buy certain sized buildings and we're like, you know what like we got some time let's just start getting down this path and sure enough like our
Luckily our previous real estate like was starting to ⁓ gain value. And by the time we actually pulled the trigger, we had refinanced some properties and we had, we had enough money in the bank. But if we hadn't done that right off the hop, like in the, at the month one, we'll call it then six months later, we would actually be starting that process and we would have been another six months out. So we are now going to be having a
cash flowing, high performing, multi-family properties six months to a year earlier than we could have if we had waited around for the perfect time to do it.
Jessilyn Persson (10:19)
Yeah, so all this is say it is to say waiting for the perfect moment moment only delays progress Action creates momentum. So make sure you're in action ⁓ Another takeaway we've learned over the years is and this is quote by Henry Ford But whether you think you can or you think you can't either way You're right
Brian Persson (10:42)
Yeah, and I think we, you and I have both experienced and everybody out there has experienced this. It's pretty, pretty typical having, having those, ⁓ the blinders on and only being able to see what you're able to see. Yep.
Jessilyn Persson (10:55)
Yeah, yeah, your mindset is a foundation for wealth and we know that when, you know, I know we've shared many stories on our podcast before about my scarcity mindset versus my abundance mindset and that was literally thought that shifted the trajectory based on changing my thoughts around money.
Brian Persson (11:19)
Exactly, yeah. And for me, a lot of it is just knowing that everything is in place. And the thing is, is that nothing is ever always going to be perfectly in place. So even with these multifamily deals that we're currently acquiring, I knew in my head that I was waiting for a particular moment where all the stars aligned and I really knew that these deals were going to be the perfect deals.
But I forced myself to just jump when I met some minimum criteria for some of these multi-family property because I knew that if I didn't do that, then I would always, in my head, would always think it's not quite the right time and I would think that I can't do it.
Jessilyn Persson (12:09)
Right? And I think a lot of people ⁓ stall because they think they can't, they think they're not good enough, they think they're not ready. But if you just shift that to be like, I'm ready, I'll run and I'll clean up the mistakes if there are, and sometimes there's not. But if you can go on with that thought, you'll get so much further.
Brian Persson (12:31)
And if you really can't get your head around what you think you can do, go find rooms full of people that know that they can do it. I know that changed a huge amount of my perspective when it came to real estate. ⁓ I, I, there was, there was a time where, mean, I mean, we're all limited in certain ways, but there was a time that I, thought like, I don't even understand how people get these many properties. Like where do they have the time? How do they have the, the, the, hours in the day?
And then I went into some real estate rooms early on in our real estate career and there were people who were doing it. And then I just started picking their brain and it turns out that, you you don't know what you don't know. You just have to go about things in a different way. But up to that point, I thought I couldn't do it and therefore I didn't do it. It was that simple.
Jessilyn Persson (13:23)
100 % and I know people have some huge blocks when it comes to money, debt, mortgages. I mean, I know we've also shared in previous podcasts, you when we do talk about our real estate portfolio, even just with family and friends, sometimes you just see the shock on their face when we mentioned the amount of mortgages we have and they're just like.
and sleep at night. It's like, actually you could. Right? Let's change that thought and say, you could be a multimillionaire if you just shift your thoughts around borrowing and loans and look at it from as a business as opposed to like just kind of, oh, it's a personal debt, right? Because consistent use of good debt can keep growing your portfolio. And that's what we summarized a while back. That's like, wow, we invested in our early years, about 200 grand.
And that's kind of what we just keep investing. We pull it out, we invest more, we pull it out, not invest more money, but invest the same dollars to buy more real estate.
Brian Persson (14:28)
Yeah, to expand on that, the 200 grand bought our first initial properties. And now we're just taking those properties that we bought, which have grown in value, the debts, the mortgages have been paid down and we're able to borrow gain some. that, that $200,000 that we've invested basically throughout the, throughout our entire real estate career is starting to replicate and like multiply.
through the numbers of properties that we're buying. And we're not really having to use any of our own more of our own money in order to like feed our real estate portfolio.
Jessilyn Persson (15:08)
Exactly. Even our multifamily, even though we started, like I said, with single family houses, condos, and then suited properties, that we just kept reinvesting that same kind of 200,000. And as the properties grew, they were, ⁓ they appreciated, they were worth more. We pulled that out. And that's what we're using now to buy our multifamilies. And so to think that's how we started and where we're going,
or just repurposing the money, it's not as hard as one might think when you realize how to strategize your portfolio and what you're buying and what that looks like over time.
Brian Persson (15:51)
Exactly. It's not as hard as you think, but people don't see all the work that went into it. just like, you know, your NBA player or your hockey player, didn't, they didn't see when they get out on the court or on the rink and they score those goals, no one has seen the tens of thousands of shots that they made before they got on that, that 20 minute time on, on, on the court or on the rink to actually make that goal.
And when people look at a real estate portfolio and they think like, how do you do, how do you have that much with seemingly that little, right? Well, you're not seeing the 10 years that it took us of managing the properties and making sure we were using the money properly and not, not like abusing or, like, damaging our real estate portfolio in any way by like, say pulling out money when we shouldn't have been pulling out money.
None of that is visible. And here we are at the end of it. And it seems like we're just pulling out all this money out of thin air. But the reality is that a lot of work went into that, building the real estate portfolio that we have today.
Jessilyn Persson (17:05)
Absolutely, managing it properly so our credit history is good, right? just take, like you said, using the money the way it's supposed to be used for the business. So we didn't pull it out and buy frivolous things or take fancy trips. We pulled it out, put it back in a more real estate, right? So there was absolute ⁓ hard work and time. I mean, we've been investing for over 15 years and it's really starting to pay off.
Brian Persson (17:33)
Yeah, a lot of delayed gratification, is I think in very, short commodity nowadays. ⁓ I know kids at school and people that we meet, they just seem to have very, little of it. But it took a lot of delayed gratification to get to this point where the momentum of it starts to build. you can actually really do some stuff that I couldn't have imagined us doing 10 years ago.
Even today it sometimes surprises me that we're able to do some of this.
Jessilyn Persson (18:05)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then the third takeaway we want to share today is that leap first and build a parachute on the way down. I understand it sounds absolutely unsensical because no one would want to jump out of a plane and then figure out their parachute. But sometimes you don't need to have every answer before you take action.
Brian Persson (18:30)
No, the only qualification I would put around that is like at least make sure you have the parts for the parachute. Like for example, when we got into multifamily, we jumped. We were just like, we're gonna do this, let's go. I honestly, if we hadn't put the contract on our very first multifamily property,
I would never have learned all the stuff that I learned about what it actually means to buy an apartment building. ⁓ But we were smart and we had a coach hired way before that. that at the point when we actually pulled the trigger, now we had somebody to lean on. even though we're putting the parachute together and we're trying to put this apartment deal together, which we kind of know is a good deal.
We have a coach on one side helping us support it. We are building the parachute on the other side, putting this deal together. And in the end, it's turned into a fantastic deal.
Jessilyn Persson (19:33)
Yeah, I mean that sounds all amazing, of course. You know, having the coach in place, having that all prepared. But that isn't exactly how we started. I mean, I know when we first decided to get into suede properties, it was because I was looking in the newspaper with our oldest who was maybe two at the time.
and he literally pointed to this property and said, mommy, can we go play in that yard? And I'm like, what? ⁓ no, it's someone's house. And then when I read it a little closer, I was like, a sweeted property for that price? Went and took a look and I think we had an offer on it within that day or two because we're like, this sounds, this looks like a great deal.
Brian Persson (20:12)
But where Realtor was on vacation? Was it for that property? property? Either way, like, yeah, we pulled the trigger fast and figured out how to manage multi-family, sorry, figured out how to manage suite of properties much after we actually had bought the property. Now we were into a totally different game where you're having to manage two tenants in the same house and there's noise things and...
Jessilyn Persson (20:16)
Nope, not that
Brian Persson (20:40)
yard issues and all this other stuff. But we learned it on the fly. And now we have a fairly sizable portfolio of single family homes with basement suites in them. if the universe hadn't been feeding our oldest kid that ad, we would never have had it.
Jessilyn Persson (21:05)
We very likely would now and those have turned out to be really great investments for us, all our sweeted properties. again, another, just another step, more action and we figured it out as we bought it. Right? wasn't like, what is sweeted family and what does it mean? And what does it look like? It's like, this looks like a really good deal. Let's buy it. And then we learned.
Brian Persson (21:26)
Yeah, yeah, you got it. Yeah. Like when I look back to schooling, for example, I remember like all the stuff I learned in college and then every single job I had after college didn't use anything about the schooling that I'd actually learned. Some of the foundations were there, but like really none of the, none of the like, like hard skills that I had learned in college. And that's very much like real estate and, and probably numerous other professions is sometimes
Sometimes you just gotta get a little bit of that foundation in there and then you just gotta jump.
Jessilyn Persson (22:02)
Yeah, I'd say I did that with project management. Yep. I mean, I think I might have shared this, but like I study for five and a half weeks to get that exam written. And I remember my mentor at the time, he asked how long I'd study and I told him, he goes, whoa, don't worry. You get to take the exam three times. I'm like, what? He goes, I studied for three months. Most people study for a year. Jess, I'm like, okay, cool. Thanks. And then I took.
the exam and I passed on the first try and it was grueling. will admit it was the worst exam I've taken out of all my years of university and other courses. But then I've never really used that book again. But I'm one of the top project managers here and it's kind of thing, same thing, trial and error. Let's run with this, see how it works and you learn as you go.
Brian Persson (22:53)
Yeah, same thing with private equity. Hard exam, barely use any of the knowledge I learned when I got licensed in private equity. Almost all of my knowledge in private equity is learned from either doing the deals or talking with the people around me who are doing private equity deals along with me. It's all boots on the ground education.
Jessilyn Persson (23:17)
Yeah, so growth and wealth require courage. So trust yourself, take the leap, and you'll figure out the details as you go. I mean, we always have in every endeavor we've taken. So what are the most important, what is the most important takeaway from what we discussed today? Oh, that's a good one, because they were all so good, but I think it always does start with your mindset, right? I mean,
Whether it's the right time or not, whether you leap first or build a parachute on the way down, it all ties back into mindset. So I'll take the second one where, you know, we quote Henry Ford, whether you think you can or think you can't, either way you're right.
Brian Persson (23:56)
Yep. And my, my takeaway is around perfection. As a, as a, let's call myself a reformed perfectionist where I used to not jump on anything until I absolutely knew. Now I, now I jump on things significantly sooner than I know that they're actually possible or they're going to be perfect. So I would just highly recommend for everyone out there, jump just 10 % faster than you think you should. And then the next day you'll just jump.
10 % faster than that and eventually you'll just be jumping and your life will be flying along.
Jessilyn Persson (24:33)
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 (24:40)
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 favourite podcast app. Thank you for joining us on this journey to create your life by design.
Jessilyn Persson (24:58)
Thanks again for listening. It's been a pleasure being with you today.