The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Transform Your Marriage and Wealth with Life by Design with Jessilyn Persson

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Transform Your Marriage and Wealth with Life by Design with Jessilyn Persson Discoverlifebydesign.ca About the Guest(s): Jessilyn Persson is the author of "Super Mom Super Me Bus Miss to Become a Super You." Together with her husband, she co-founded a 90-day program aimed at helping individuals and couples build a life by design backed by real estate. Jessilyn Persson brings extensive experience in both corporate roles and real estate investment, where she's navigated financial strategies and the complexities of investment portfolios since 2009. Episode Summary: In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, Chris sits down with Jessilyn Persson, co-founder of "Discover Life by Design" and author of several empowering books, to dive into the intersection of real estate investing and relationship building. Over the last decade, Jessilyn Persson has not only built a successful real estate portfolio but also developed a program to help couples navigate their financial futures together. Stemming from her own experiences in balancing a corporate job, a family, and a growing investment portfolio, Jessilyn Persson shares valuable insights on mindset shifts, clear communication, and strategic planning. The conversation covers the importance of having aligned financial goals within a marriage, how to handle the stress of real estate investment, and crafting agreements to enhance accountability. Jessilyn Persson emphasizes the necessity of a unified approach, understanding each partner's mindset, and communicating effectively to ensure investments contribute positively to both wealth and relationship health. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just getting started, this episode offers actionable advice on building a financially secure and harmonious future with your partner. Key Takeaways: Unified Financial Goals: Successfully investing as a couple means getting on the same page about your financial objectives and understanding each other's sleep-at-night factors. Effective Communication: Establishing regular, structured meetings to discuss finances and other key aspects can significantly improve both your investment strategy and relationship. Clear Agreements: Developing agreements in your relationship can take the guesswork out of everyday tasks and major financial decisions, reducing potential conflicts. Mindset and Barriers: Overcoming pre-existing money mindsets and self-worth barriers is crucial for unlocking your true wealth potential. Expert Guidance: Engaging with mentors or educational resources can accelerate your investment journey and help you avoid costly mistakes. Notable Quotes: "We help couples explore and navigate what it's good to invest in wealth and real estate." "If you don't wanna be up at midnight because a tenant had to flood, maybe you need to invest in Real REITs." "We really started to push each other to be a better version of ourselves." "Had we really understood what a mentor or coach was back in our day, we could have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars." "It can make all the difference…if you're really aligned with your partner on your finances and your values."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys for 16 years and over 2,000 episodes, we're bringing the most smartest, brilliant people on the planet. None of them are me, of course. That's why we have guests on the show. Because we need to liven this up and smarten the show up. So we have these brilliant guests that come on the show.

Be sure to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the TikTokity and Chris Voss, Facebook.com, 4chesschrisfast, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfast, chrisfast1 and the tiktokity, and chrisfastfacebook.com. She is the author of the amazing book that came out called Super Mom, Super Me, Bust Miss to Become a Super You. Jesse Lynn Pearson is on the show with us today. We're going to be talking to her about real estate, how to survive as a couple, how to invest as a couple,

and all those great things on the thing. Welcome to the show, Jessie Lynn. How are you? Thank you for having me, Chris. I am doing wonderful. There you go. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? DiscoverLifeByDesign.ca because we are in Canada. There you go. You mean I shouldn't lead my life recklessly? Is recklessly bad? You're supposed to use design?

What's that? Sorry. Am I supposed to? So I'm supposed to live my life by design as opposed to living it recklessly? It might lead to more positive outcomes. Oh, there you go. Well, that sounds like a good idea. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do there.

Absolutely. So my husband and I, we partnered together and we created a 90-day program to help individuals and couples build a life by design. And we help them with the wealth side of it. So wealth strategy. And we back that by real estate. Ah, real estate's kind of a hot thing lately, or at least has been for the last 20 years. You guys have a podcast as well that's entitled Life by Design. Is that correct?

Correct. Yes. There you go. So people can check out all your stuff there. And then tell us about, I think you've got some offerings on the website where people can get some free stuff. We sure do. So if you go to discoverlifebydesign.ca slash wealth, you can download our wealth guide. Of course, our podcast has all kinds of tidbits of information that is on any of the podcast platforms that you usually listen to.

There you go. So you got into this business and tell us kind of how you grew up, what motivated you, what got you down the road and what got you into real estate? Absolutely. So I grew up in a small town, farm actually, outside of a small town, and I hated it. So I moved to the closest, biggest city, got myself an education, and started down the corporate route. Was in the corporate route for years, and then in 2019, I burnt out. I had too much on my plate. And that's when my husband and I decided, all right, let's review our life and see what

is working and what we want to change. But we started investing together in 2009. So we've been in real estate for quite a few years now. But with having two young boys and both being in the corporate world and managing a real estate portfolio, it just became not where we want to go with our kiddos and our family. So we designed the program, which is relationships and real estate. And we help couples explore and navigate what it's good to invest in wealth and real estate. But we always start with what we call the foundation. So we get in and we do assessments on values and how you respond to adversity, but we get you to do it individually and then share it with your partner. And then it's interesting how they come together to realize that they might not have known

half the stuff about this partner that they've been with for years. And then we get you on the same page with where you are wealth. And then we step into let's build your wealth strategy and plan. Then we'll get you into action to building your wealth so you can live the life you want whether that's time freedom location freedom new job get rid of a crappy boss it's just whatever it is you we let you you know define what that looks like and it's different for everyone like for us we really wanted time and location freedom so that we can work from anywhere and then of course have the ability to go to our kids little shows and stuff at school while they're still young and appreciate that before they don't want to hang out with mom and dad yeah and you can spend more time with the kids and make time with your loved ones or not some people in covid found they really didn't want to spend like i didn't realize how awful you were

and how bad i was going to work to avoid you but now we're divorcing so that's good but you guys help married couples kind of through the struggle the financial navigations trying to work to avoid you but now we're divorcing so that's good but you guys help married couples kind of through the struggle the financial navigations trying to work together as a team i guess for real estate i suppose that can be a challenge because you know one thing when you're romantically involved i mean that's that's one thing but you know it's hard to run a business together with your spouse i mean just about anybody whether it's running a business or whether it's working like i remember i don't, when I was like 20 or something, I saw a Harvard Business Review article that talked about how it's really hard for spouses to work together, either in a job format or any format. And they highlighted some different stories.

There were some pilots that worked together as a married couple. And there's very few married couples that can really kind of navigate it. I'm sure with your help, they can do better. But without any help, it's a tough road because you're stacking a lot onto a relationship. It's already bad enough you have to live with that person and see them every morning. No, I'm just kidding. Being a single guy, crap. So talk to us a little bit about that. Absolutely. It was a little bit of a long, hard road. And that was a real estate investment portfolio because we had separate careers so we could go to our office for that getaway, as you explained. But even coming together to figure out a real estate portfolio,

it's because it's still a business decision in the end when we're building it and there are a lot of hoops and things we had to jump through and figure out and one of the biggest ones was communication i obviously i wasn't the communicator communicator i openly admit that now that i realize it my husband would chat and i'm like let's just get crap done like why don't we talk about it? Just buy it. It's a damn thing. Exactly. But as we learned to navigate, and I had a goal when we bought our first property together in 2009, our first investment property. I was like, I'm going to buy a new property every two years, but I didn't share that with him. And I guess that's something I should have. I bet in 2016, he came home from work one day and he's like, that's it. I can't manage any,

because he's the property manager. He goes, I can and in my head i'm like yes you can like we we got to build a well for our family so you were so you were out buying stuff that he had to work on yeah and that's funny that's hilarious but you know i mean this is a thing that people don't really probably think through you know how do we you know i i mean i i've done that with companies where i've put a bunch of work up the place like hey you need to get some more employees dummy yeah that's that's always the thing but communication is really important you know i think a lot of people struggle with that in like just normal relationships that are you know they get you know life gets in the way kids get in the way i i don't know how parents do it when they get kids and they're trying to juggle all the the balls and and and

you know and there's you're going 100 miles an hour at that point through life with no sleep pretty much so there's the there's the fun and joy of that some people call it children i call it no sleep no i'm just kidding i'm being funny. So what are some other things that you tend to find people are struggling with in being a couple and trying to real estate invest? I think one of the biggest things is lack of education and understanding the real estate market because it's vast, right? You name it, there are so many different ways you can invest in real estate and they just don't know where to start or how to get started. And then it's one thing to not know, but if you and your partner aren't even on the same page about how you want to invest. So the big thing that we really work on

in our program is what we call your sleep at night factor. As you mentioned, sleep. So for example, we invest in suite of properties, which I believe the state's called more of a duplex, but we don't do commercial for certain reasons as we've gone down that road. And it's like, why? And people ask us, why not? And it's like, we don't like the long-term no tenant. So if you lose a tenant, generally commercial can take six, nine months. And that's a big cost overhead you got to manage and keep. Whereas when we're suite of properties, if someone moves out upstairs, the basement will cover it. But that's our sleep at night factor. Everyone has a different one.

And a lot of people don't think of that when they get into real estate. If you don't want to be up at midnight because a tenant had a flood, maybe you need to invest in real estate investment trusts, like funds where you're not active. And people need to, if we can make them very aware of that first, it can save them so much pain later in their investment plan. There you go. So you got to find the, you guys help them find the right product that can work for them. Because I mean, there's a million, I don't know if there's exactly a million. I'm just being facetious people. Some people write me, you send them, there's a million, there's not.

I count it. There's a lot of different variations. In fact, we just had somebody on the show this week where they actually buy mortgage notes themselves. They own the note. And it's kind of funny. They can have a different negotiating strategy, especially with, they almost have no foreclosures because they'll negotiate as opposed to just hard foreclose like a bank would. And it gives them more options. And I don't know, from what they were telling them,

like maybe this needs to become a bank thing because it's not like banks are losing a lot of money. Just hard is saying screw you and foreclosing. And so it was kind of interesting, but they have a lot of leeway. But, yeah, we've had so many different people in all the variants of real estate i mean there's rv we just had somebody on two weeks ago who's an rv park investor and then we've we've had a few mobile home park investors that have been on the show i mean single family commercial you know mobile home rv i'm just waiting for somebody just doing like a normal park investing

does anybody do that? Maybe that's a city thing. That's probably a city, city, county, city, county government thing. Maybe they should, maybe they should turn those over to, man, no, they shouldn't do that. Anyway, people really struggle, I imagine, with these things. And part of your free download of the book people can get on the website, help people navigate these issues and things. Am I correct?

Correct. yes. There you go. And you just, you know, it can make all the difference because, you know, I suppose if one person in the couple maybe chooses a bad investment, you know, you might get angry at each other and end up divorcing because you're like, you bought that, whatever that was, and you made a horrible decision.

You didn't check with me. Yeah, that's actually something else we work on in our program is actually choosing both sides of the equation because you're right, a lot of people invest and they want all the good of it, but if it fails, they haven't accepted that. Yeah. So we work them through that.

It's okay if you lose money, are you okay with that? And if you're not, this might not be the investment for you. It's kind of like that. It's kind of like when the kids do something good, they're everyone's kids. When the kids do something wrong, they're one person in the relationship's kids. Your kids did this. They passed through your body. They're still yours.

So, yeah, I can see why that causes scuffles. I mean, I've had business partners that I was in a relationship with. And, you know, you have differences of opinion on how you should invest. Return on investment, you know, the bad investments. Like one time, you invest in that stupid thing, idiot. It costs us 50 grand. Was that me? But, yeah, so you help with their mindset.

You also help with achieve ideal family life balance because you know you're really adding an extra structure i think to couple them where you're adding the business factor of it and the vesting factor of it and you know now you're running a business and that's that's that's definitely a challenge i can barely i can barely put up with an hour date with somebody as a single person. You guys are like married for life and then building companies for life or investing for life. So, yeah. I don't know.

I'm tired already. What do you find else helps people struggle with realizing there's a few different things in your course, gaining insight into your values and overcoming mindset and self-worth barriers. How do those impact? So a lot of times we find your money mindset comes from your past, your upbringing, your ancestors, your teachers, what you've learned. And you naturally, because they don't teach it in our education systems, at least not in Canada, you naturally default what you know. And it's generally what your parents did. So it's like, in my generation, we grew up, it's okay, you pay off your mortgage,

and then you save for retirement. That doesn't get you wealthy. So we work on helping them navigate and understand where their mindset came from, so they can work on moving past it and being okay with whatever it is they want, because a lot of people have that fear also, if I'm wealthy, but my parents worked hard and they're not wealthy. Yeah, but that's choices they made, right? How they chose to invest it or what they did with their money, that was their choice. That's not you. And it's okay if you want to be a multimillionaire, it's up to you and you have these tools to do it. But if your mindset is stopping you, you're not going to make the millions. Yeah. You got to have that mindset. Some people, a lot of people have self-learning have these tools to do it but if your mindset is stopping you you're not going to make the millions

yeah you got to have that mindset some people a lot of people have self-loathing beliefs yeah and stuff do you do you recommend that people you know what if you have a situation where the spouse is i don't want to be involved in any of this i just want to raise the kids and you know make food and i just don't want to deal with all that that noise you you do it do you recommend that couples do that is that bad because you know maybe if maybe if i don't know something happens to one person that you know then they don't know what's going on or how to manage the business do you recommend that if people don't want to you know join in the phone no we recommend doing it together.

And that's for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the whole brainchild of our program actually came out of us attending different real estate rooms and conferences. And everyone would approach us and be like, how do you do it together? My wife said, my wife's not interested. My husband doesn't want to invest. And so finally, we're after a few years of hearing this over and over. We're like, okay, we got something here. Let's create it.

And we also found that while we were aligned, we wanted to invest in real estate as a couple. And we did since 2009. In 2016, we had that breaking point where I mentioned my husband came home and he said he was done. And I was like, no, you're not. And so I signed him up for a program. He went begrudgingly. I openly admit this.

But it was a real estate investment networking group. And after he came home, completely changed his mindset. We bought three more properties in 18 months. There you go. And so we went from building our wealth to accelerating our wealth when we were actually on the same page and communicated what we wanted that to be. And we just find a lot of individuals when we talk to them, if the male are investing in the real estate, which predominantly is the men, they're like, my wife has zero interest.

She doesn't want to know about it. And you could tell they're bothered because they want to talk about it. They're excited. They want to celebrate when they have wins, but their wife has zero interest. And so we help couples come together to understand that this isn't his wealth.

This is a family wealth. And eventually it's going to be a legacy for your children. So as the female or the male, whomever's not really interested, you should be invested and it will grow bigger. Even if you're not super active in it, but you're supporting it and giving an opinion plus perspective, right? Like we see things differently. What my husband sees, I don't

necessarily see. So if he can tell me or explain it, our decisions will shift based on the conversation as opposed to just, I think this is great. Let's do it. Ah, yeah. Cause there's more insight. You've got more more eyes on the on the problem or issues or you know just eyes on everything and so you're working together as a team as opposed to just a single person trying to juggle it all as more so there you go one thing you talk about is making clear agreements do we need to have do we need to sign new contracts in the relationship or it's funny you mentioned that because agreements actually are a part of our program. And it's not necessarily like a legal written contract.

But what we have, for example, is we started putting agreements in place for everything in our marriage. Wow. And it's incredible how much the relationship came together because now we actually have an understanding. We're not guessing. It's like, are you going are you gonna take out the garbage no it's the agreement you take out the garbage so you have an assigned agreement system you like what about like the dishes and laundry and stuff yeah i cook he cleans oh yeah the kids can help with the laundry so we start

to bring the kids in as they get older but even agreements we have one where it's again it's not written but we formalized it verbally it's to push each other so when i encouraged him to go to that or i signed him up for that event and he went he realized i saw potential in him that he didn't so now we push each other to grow and just keep being a better version of ourselves but yeah we have agreements for and we talk to the individuals that we coach and the couples we coach we actually encourage them to put agreements in place for everything and it takes the guesswork out and then you don't have to come home to maybe an outrage or a fight because one person had an expectation that the other one didn't meet.

Ah, that can be bad. Yeah. Yeah. That happens to me all the time over the toilet seat being left up. So there you go. The jokes. Yeah, I could see. Do you think that maybe, you know, a lot of people, they go into relationships

and maybe over time communication drops out because they're so busy, you know kids around not sleeping or you know just life you're just trying to maintain you got bills through the roof you know those kids are expensive these days that's why i'm single childless and and so do you think that maybe what you help people with to communicate better probably translates over into their personal stuff as well and maybe makes their relationship a lot more put on a solid footing. Absolutely. There you go. There you go.

So you can help people because I know COVID was really funny. I don't know about funny. I'm not sure funny is the right word actually come to think of it. But I know COVID, you know, a lot of people woke up, you know, having to spend, you know, more, you know, they couldn't escape to think of it but i know covid you know a lot of people woke up you know having to spend you know more you know they couldn't escape to the office anymore they spent time living with each other and looking at each other for the first time for long periods of time and going what the hell did i do marrying you know communication getting to know each other

better understand each other working together as a team because that's kind of what that's really what marriage is it's a team effort right yeah it should be yeah it's a it's a team effort you know it should be you're right i've probably met a lot of people there's there's been no there's the iron there's no iron team so there you go so you help people design a 90-day action plan. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So once we get through the mindset and make sure you're on the same page with your values and everything, we then start working into an action plan that the couple actually creates. We just guide them.

And so depending on what their top three goals or intentions are, which could be like, for example, one couple we have right now, they want to buy a new house, they want to have a babe and they want to go on a vacation. That's their future kind of wealth. And so then once they've articulated that, we then get them to break it down over 90 days in small bite-sized pieces that will help them accomplish that. And that could include, for example, if they want a house, okay, so let's line up all the team you need around you to make that happen, like a realtor, a mortgage broker, a lawyer, just to make sure that when you're ready to run, they know your expectations,

they know what you're looking for, you know the costs, so you're prepared in advance of what that's going to look like. And then they're just prepared to be able to access and get what it is they want in their wealth plan. There you go. It really makes a difference. What else haven't we covered that you guys help folks with that we haven't touched on? Excuse me. So we talk, again, communication is the big one for us.

One of the things we always, almost right off the start, recommend, and we've done it, and we say it can sound really boring. We almost run our marriage like a business so i know it's not exciting but it works where excuse me we have a preset meeting every week in the calendar yep and we recommend that all couples do that and for different topics so we have one for a relationship one finances, and then we have one for what we call family intention, where we bring our boys in to just see where they're at, what their intention for the week is. And then once a week, firstly, it's pre-scheduled. So you can't say you didn't know about it.

You can prepare for it if you feel you need to. You can't say you're not home because you are. Exactly. you feel you need to you can't say you're not home because you are exactly and it gives you that sense of ease for those who maybe don't communicate well to be like okay wait i got this on my chest and i know you're busy so i probably shouldn't interrupt you right now but i know we have a preset time at 10 a.m on sunday or whatever it is to talk about our finances and again we encourage them it's not like how are finances oh they're good we don them. It's not like, how are our finances? Oh, they're good. We don't know. Get into some granular. Do you think we're on the right path with the goals that we set out for this year? What can we change or make better? So it's an actual conversation.

It's a little hard to get that wheel going, but once you do, it starts to become natural. And then you're having conversations around dinner or maybe during the day where you wouldn't normally because you just have that fear of either asking it because you don't want to stir the pot or because you fear your partner's too busy and you don't want to interrupt. But it leaves that space and then it's like working out. It's a muscle.

You work it over time, it'll build. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing about being an entrepreneur. It builds over time, it gets done. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing about being an entrepreneur. It builds over time, it gets done. So people can sign up on your website. They can outreach to you. Do you have a book of call where people can see if you're a good fit or anything like that that goes on on your website? Absolutely.

You can go to our website, and there's a book of discovery call right on there as well. You can do that, and that's for free, as well as our wealth guide, as I mentioned. That's a good starting point. Mm-hmm. And couples can finally get their wealth off the ground and of course learn to work together better so that's always good and usually if couples work together better the kids are happier so everyone's happier i think usually so it's true it's true this is why i don't have a joke for that enhanced accountability and progress tracking. That's good. So you teach them how to manage the money part and the books and stuff like that, I guess. Yep. We, again, we get them to lay out a budget, current budget, so they know

what, where they stand today and then a future budget. Okay. If you had this and whatever that might be, some people want to upgrade their house or their vehicle or their vacations. What does that look like? And okay, so now we've got a gap. You're here, you want to be here. How do we fill that gap? There you go. Fill the gaps. That's important because the gaps, sometimes the things you're not sometimes looking at or paying attention to are the ones that'll bite you in the butt because it's like, hey, did no one cover that? There you go. So as we go out, give people your final pitch out to onboard with you reach out to you in dot coms and stuff absolutely so yeah if you want to increase

your wealth and do it through real estate we always recommend getting on the same page first or getting yourself educated and that's a big lesson we learned through our real estate journey is that had we really understood what a mentor or coach was back in our day, we could have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and time in our investing mistakes. But hey, we learned from it. And here we are. You can reach us on discoverlifebydesign.ca and you can book a Discover call or go to discoverlifebydesign.ca slash wealth and download our wealth guide and we'd be happy to help you on your journey to build your

wealth into the millions. There you go. And it's free! If not the billions. The millions of billions. You've got to sell the big picture. The billions? You've got to get to the millions before you can get to the billions. Yeah, you do. Right. That's what Carl Sagan would say. The billions. So there you go. Thank you very much

for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. There you go. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreese.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, chrisvoss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.