How Small Consistent Habits can Shape your Wealth

In this episode, hosts Jessilyn and Brian Persson discuss how small, consistent habits can shape your wealth in surprising ways. They emphasize the importance of starting small habits and gradually increasing them over time. They share personal experiences of building habits, such as working out and journaling. These new habits feel initially challenging, but with discipline, they become easier and more natural. 

They also highlight the power of financial discipline, such as automating savings and investing first. Grant Cardone's strategy of investing every penny is shared as an extreme example of how discipline can pay off over time. Jessilyn and Brian also stress the impact of compounding effects, citing RSPs as an example where small, consistent contributions can grow substantially over time.

Jessilyn and Brian have three key takeaways for listeners: start small, build discipline, and stack habits for compounding results. Following these three strategies can make all the difference in your finances, health goals, and any area of life where you want to make a change. 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Download “Three Mistakes That Keep High-Achieving Couples From Building Their Wealth, Freedom, and Living a Life They Love” at DiscoverLifeByDesign.ca/wealth
• Grant Cardone

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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: [00:00:10] Welcome to 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: [00:00:51] Today's topic is on how small, consistent habits can shape your wealth. Small, consistent habits shape your wealth by leveraging the power of incremental growth, discipline and compounding over time. Our first takeaway is, keep it small and simple. That is the key.

Brian Persson: [00:01:13] Keep it small and simple. Absolutely. I cannot count the number of times I have overwhelmed myself with trying to change too many things at once.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:22] Yes. Or taking a big lofty thing and trying to make it happen tomorrow.

Brian Persson: [00:01:28] Habits don't change overnight. They're exactly like going to the gym, you got to go and do the reps. You got to build that muscle day after day.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:01:37] Great example for me, this isn't necessarily with wealth, but I work out every day. I have for as long as I can remember. And it's natural, it's a habit, it's normal to me. But then when I decided to start journaling and figuring out how to meditate, I struggled with that for years. I'm like, how do people do this daily? And it's no different than working out. Once you make it a habit and you put that space in your calendar and you get up and you do it. Even if you're like, ah, I don't have time, or I want to sleep in, or whatever it is. But you just do it, and then over time, it's natural. Now you're like, okay, I get up, I journal, I work out. And now it's like, oh, and here before I didn't think I had the "time", but it was a priority. I just didn't prioritize it.

Brian Persson: [00:02:20] Yeah, priority is big. Your habit of journaling, there, actually caused me to create a habit. Because we have a common gym in our house and you were using the gym, and so I was not able to use the gym at that time. And so I had to actually change my sleep schedule, and I ended up joining the 5 a.m. club and getting up at, it was actually the 4:30 club. But it took me probably six months, I think, to actually build up the routine of getting up at 4:30. It wasn't like, September I just woke up, started waking up at 4:30. It was like, September I 'tried' to wake up at 4:30.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:02] I remember watching you on that journey because your journey impacted my journey because I shifted it. So you got up early, you went and did your workout. In that time, I would get up an hour later and that's when I would journal and meditate, and then I'd go work out. But if you didn't get up, I'm laying there going, you're in my space.

Brian Persson: [00:03:19] There was all kinds of little habits that got jostled around there. But now, it's very hard for me not to wake up at that time. And it feels kind of bizarre to not wake up at that time because the habit is so ingrained.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:34] Yeah, absolutely. So simple habits like saving a fixed percentage of your income, or automating investments or regularly contributing to a retirement fund can steadily build your financial foundation. And I know a lot of companies do this where they will take, if you approve it of course, take a percentage of your paycheck before you even get it and put it into some kind of a fund for you. Now that's a great way, hands off. All you got to do is sign up for it, and it's done.

Brian Persson: [00:04:03] You don't need your company to do that for you. It's called 'pay yourself first'. So pay yourself first by investing your money first and then making sure that you have enough for expenses and whatever else. One of our mentors, Grant Cardone, he's famous for what's called 'going broke'. So his habit is to literally invest every penny he had, earlier on in his career, to the point where he wasn't even able to pay rent sometimes. He figured it out, but he invested and invested first before he thought about anything else. Now he has a $4 billion real estate portfolio and a $300 million a year company. So he's not complaining, but it's kind of crazy what he forced into his life as a habit before he ever really made it, per se.

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:59] And I know a lot, for years, they say save 10% of your income. And if you can do that, that's fantastic to start. But as we mentioned in this takeaway, small and simple is the key. If 10% seems like too much based on what you got going on right now, start with 1%, reassess it after a month or two, go up to 2%. The slow increments will add up and it won't feel like such a burden to you at first, and before you know it, you're going to be at 10% and it's like nothing. You won't even notice it.

Brian Persson: [00:05:30] And if you have not enough money to save, go the other way. See what expenses you can cut down. I know almost every one of our clients that we run through ...