3 Key Strategies We Used to Educate Ourselves on Real Estate

In this episode, hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson share the three key strategies they used to grow their real estate business and how following these strategies can save listeners time, money, and avoidable headaches. It all starts with education. Both Jessilyn and Brian agree that education and real estate success go hand in hand. The more you know, the better the decisions you’ll be able to make. 

Takeaway number one is to pick an investment strategy and stick with it. Maybe you want to follow the BRRR method, or maybe you want to focus on multi-family residences. Trying to follow several investment paths can lead to confusion and overwhelm. Whichever strategy you choose, it should light you up and help you sleep well at night. Takeaway number two is to network with experienced investors. The best way to learn new tips and make lasting connections is to network with investors who have more experience than you. You never know when those relationships will provide rewards in the future.

Takeaway number three: Invest in a program or hire a coach—often, they’re one and the same. Many investors make costly mistakes on their journey to success. By working with a coach or joining a program, you can learn proven strategies from experienced professionals, helping you avoid common pitfalls. Whether you're new to real estate investing or have some experience, a coach can save you time, money, and stress while fast-tracking your success.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• The 3 Mistakes that Keep High Achieving Couples from Building their Wealth, Freedom & Living a Life they Love
• BRRR Method: Buy, Renovate, Refinance, Rent (Repeat)

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Contact Jessilyn and Brian Persson | Discover Life By Design: 

• Website: DiscoverLifeByDesign.ca
• Instagram: DiscoverLifeByDesign
• Facebook: Discover Life By Design
• Linkedin: Discover Life By Design

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Transcript 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:09] Welcome to the Life by Design Podcast with your hosts, Jessilyn and Brian Persson. We support couples in achieving their wealth goals by sharing our journey of overcoming barriers to build our financial empire.

Brian Persson: [00:00:20] Recognizing the growing need for couples to find alignment and invest confidently in real estate, we created the Riches, Relationships and Real Estate Program. Our goal is to support you in achieving your financial and relationship goals together. Want to know more about what's stopping you from building your wealth? Make sure to go to discoverlifebydesign.ca/wealth and download 'The 3 Mistakes that Keep High Achieving Couples from Building their Wealth, Freedom & Living a Life they Love'.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:00:50] Today's topic is three key strategies we use to educate ourselves on real estate. So Brian, the takeaways that we're about to discuss, how do you think our lives would have been different had we actually utilized these takeaways before we got into real estate investing?

Brian Persson: [00:01:08] Well, we'd probably be high fiving each other doing this podcast on a beach in some tropical destination.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:15] I would be down for that.

Brian Persson: [00:01:17] That would be one thing that's different. But you can't predict the future, that's one of the problems. The reality is, is that education and real estate are so closely intertwined. Real estate is a massive game and it is a super wide amount of skills that you can take on and you honestly need to know a little bit about everything in order to play the investor game really well. If we got ourselves educated in some of the ways that we're going to talk about here, our whole portfolio would be different. The thousands of dollars in mistakes that we made would have been different. The amount of time we would have burnt would have been a lot less. I could go on and on about all the things that were different. Another way that we would have done things differently is the type of real estate we bought from the beginning. We started with condos, I know you wanted to just buy something.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:19] Well, it stemmed from, I was the marketing director for a real estate company at the time, and I saw this really awesome looking condo that came in at a pretty good price. I knew the renovations that the owner had done and what they originally paid for it and I was like, this is a great idea, let's get in. We didn't think twice, we just went and took a look at it, put an offer on and got it.

Brian Persson: [00:02:43] It ended up being an okay deal. Was far from our best performing property, but we probably would have taken a little more time to buy a different style of property more similar to what we are buying now because we never had the education or the understanding to run the numbers and understand the differences and the types of real estate.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:05] Also, location. We weren't educated on what makes an ideal rental property from a location perspective.

Brian Persson: [00:03:13] We made a huge mistake on location on that property, and luckily we got out of it early enough because the location that it's in has gone even more downhill than it was when we sold it. And actually, that property as well, if we had education we would have made the same mistakes on renters. The very first renter, I was just so excited to get a renter in there, I pretty well picked the first one that came across and so many things went wrong.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:43] Those were what we call great learning lessons.

Brian Persson: [00:03:46] The move-in date was on a date that we were out of town for some reason. (We were on holidays.) And so I had my buddy take the keys-

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:56] A buddy with zero real estate experience.

Brian Persson: [00:03:58] Keep in mind, I had not much more. He thought it was totally okay, without checking with me, that they didn't take the security deposit.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:10] Just hand him the keys.

Brian Persson: [00:04:11] I ended up spending 6 or 9 months in the long term just by fluke. They turned into really good renters. But I spent 6 to 9 months, I think it was, chasing rent checks and stuff like that with these guys. Once they got their life sorted out and everything settled, they were really fantastic renters. But that was a really stressful first year of renting because of not knowing how to pick a renter, putting the wrong systems in place to do everything about property management.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:46] That was a great lesson for us to learn on, who's meant to be a property manager and who is not.

Brian Persson: [00:04:54] It made all the other properties a lot easier to manage.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:57] And we knew I had to step away.

Brian Persson: [00:05:00] Jess figured that people have common sense and they just do things exact...