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Why Most Real Estate Investors Fail (And How to Avoid Their Mistakes)

By January 21, 2026Real Estate Pros Show

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Brian Persson, owner of Weekend Wealth Investments. Brian shares his journey in real estate investing, starting from small properties to scaling up to apartment buildings. He discusses the importance of operations in managing properties, the mindset needed for successful investing, and how he helps others invest in real estate. Brian emphasizes the focus on apartment buildings for their scalability and steady cash flow, and he shares insights on overcoming challenges and the significance of networking in finding deals.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Brian Persson (00:00)
    Mindset. Mindset’s everything. So that’s the very first thing that we work on ⁓ with clients when we work them through a workshop is where is your mindset? ⁓ And then, you know, you don’t necessarily have to like grow your mindset, but just recognize that, recognize where it is. And that will kind of define like what, how you should build your wealth.

    Honestly, 80 % of the people out there probably shouldn’t be real estate investors. just, don’t have the grit. They don’t have the, the wherewithal to actually do the real estate properly. And so they should be more along lines of just accepting that and finding a good partner to, to go and ⁓ invest with instead of doing the investing for them.

    Michelle Kesil (02:16)
    Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. And today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to chatting with, Brian Persson, owner of Weekend Wealth Investments, helping clients overcome complexity of investing in real estate and also 15 years experience as a real estate investor in Alberta, Canada. So excited to have you here today, Brian.

    Brian Persson (02:42)
    Yeah,

    excited to be here.

    Michelle Kesil (02:45)
    I think our listeners are going to take something away from how you’re approaching your experience in the real estate market and supporting others. So let’s dive in.

    Brian Persson (02:54)
    Yeah, absolutely.

    So start with a little bit about me, I guess. Yeah. Okay, all right. So yeah, as you just mentioned, I’ve

    Michelle Kesil (02:59)
    Yeah, go ahead.

    Brian Persson (03:05)
    investing in real estate for 15 years now. Actually, I think it’s closer to 17, just a couple of years extra on there. Started the way a lot of real estate investors do. I started buying the small, shiny, cheap things like condos and smaller cheap houses.

    Worked out okay, but obviously, you know, there’s bigger plays in real estate that you can make. And over the years, kept scaling up. My wife and I kept scaling up our game. And over the last couple of years, we’ve been starting to invest into apartment buildings here in Alberta, Canada. So we also decided to make it not just an investment for us, but an actual business. So we’ve converted a lot of our real estate ⁓ expertise and time into

    raising money for other people to help them invest into real estate as well with us and our apartment buildings. So that’s kind of the sweet and short notes of what we’ve been doing over the last 15 years.

    Michelle Kesil (04:05)
    Awesome, and are you only operating in the Alberta market or are you in other markets as well?

    Brian Persson (04:11)
    At the moment we are only operating in Alberta. We’ve had property in Saskatchewan and other areas but we’ve since liquidated that a few years ago. ⁓ Right now we’re focusing in Alberta because Alberta is kind of the hot spot of Canada right now. A lot of people are coming there. The wages are high. The real estate is still relatively cheap.

    and the rest of Canada has kind of figured that out and now the larger population centres are starting to migrate a lot of people over to Alberta. So Alberta is very hot and should be hot for the next couple of years and we’ve been investing here for 15 years so we know it very very well already and we have a little bit of an advantage on the people coming in. We can help them out and find the right property for them here in Alberta.

    Michelle Kesil (05:49)
    Awesome. What do you feel are some of the main keys that have made the biggest difference in allowing your business to be able to grow and to run smoothly?

    Brian Persson (06:01)
    Operations for sure. Every time I compare myself to other real estate investors and I hear their issues and their problems that are going on, almost always it’s operations. And you hear it everywhere from like larger apartment buildings down to sort of your small ⁓ mom and pop ⁓ operations where they just have a single family home.

    when you hear their stories, it’s always they’re a little bit asleep at the wheel or they didn’t quite operate their properties well. One of our strategies is actually to take over ⁓ badly managed properties because we’re very good at like putting in all the systems and the operations for those properties. And we can take something that look kind of like a lump of coal and turn it into a diamond very, very quickly with

    with generally out a lot of renovation costs. So that’s ⁓ a nice thing for investors because then they don’t have to put as much money into the property. But definitely over the years, I’ve found that we operate our properties ⁓ a lot harder and a lot more efficiently. And ⁓ I would say that we just care about our tenants and the buildings themselves more than a lot of other operators.

    And that has made a huge difference on our cashflow, a huge difference on the amount of equity that we’ve been able to reinvest into our properties compared to other investors that I know.

    Michelle Kesil (07:31)
    Definitely. And so how did you get started as an investor? You mentioned like that you started with all the condos and then you’ve moved up, but how did that transition actually like look for you?

    Brian Persson (07:42)
    Again like kind of like every new investor starts off They’re just like looking for something cheap and they don’t want to spend a lot of money It’s not not always the right way to go. That’s exactly how I started in fact, I I got caught in a shiny object syndrome where Edmonton back in 2007 had just spiked the real estate prices had almost doubled

    and I saw another city nearby Saskatoon doing a very very similar thing and I ran out there trying to buy a property before the before the markets spiked basically real estate speculation if you want to call it that and of course I got in a little bit late and ⁓ I ended up buying right at the peak and that property price stayed the same for about 10 years

    Still a good investment in the long term. It cashflowed really, really well. ⁓ And I barely had to do anything to manage it. ⁓ yeah, after learning that lesson, I went and got a little bit more thoughtful about where to put my money and how to invest it. And that’s when we discovered sweeted houses. So the cashflow is higher. You have now two units instead of one unit in the same building. And then like just…

    kept upping the game from that point where we’re now into apartment buildings and we’re actually helping other people invest into real estate with us.

    Michelle Kesil (09:09)
    Awesome. How are you working to help others invest with you? Is that through the course that you do? Or what does that look like?

    Brian Persson (09:18)
    Number of different ways ⁓ primarily over the last couple years. It’s it’s purely just investment. So we have two investment silos I guess you could say that we that we use and that is you can come by an apartment building with us

    and The goal there is to as I was saying we’re really good at operations. So the goal there is to

    put those systems, put those operations in place on that apartment building, raise the value quite quickly, and then pull that investor’s money back out, return the money to the investor, and they effectively have bought the building for free in the end. And then the other silo is for, ⁓ depending on the person, someone like a doctor, lawyer, dentist, those kind of people where they just need somewhere to put their money and they don’t really wanna pay attention to it.

    I also have a license in the private equity market and they can put their money into really large funds of real estate. So they’re still directly invested into real estate, but they just have a little bit more flexibility with what they can do with their money. It’s not necessarily locked up into an apartment building for one or two years until they get their money back. So those are the two ways that we help investors out. ⁓ Plus over the years, my wife and I have found, ⁓ we got asked a lot of questions. It’s like, you know,

    How do you do that? How do you have the real estate portfolio and the career and the two kids and this and that, right? Like we can barely manage the two kids and like a regular job. And ⁓ we got that question asked to us enough that we said, huh, like there’s something here. We’re doing something different. And we decided to actually put a course together for it. And we call it the Rich’s Relationships and Real Estate Program. And basically it just helps couples. ⁓

    analyze their financial goals, figure out their wealth path and choose ⁓ about three different sort of metrics to improve their life, whether that’s the wealth through health, wealth through finances, or wealth through whatever other means that they can come up with. So we’ve also done some coaching and some workshops for couples in that sense.

    Michelle Kesil (12:06)
    Amazing. And what advice would you give? What was it? Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure it’s fun to work with people in that intimate setting.

    Brian Persson (12:07)
    Yeah, it’s been fun. I said it’s been fun. Yeah, the workshops.

    Yes.

    Michelle Kesil (12:19)
    What are some advice you give for the people that you’re training or that are just starting out that maybe you wish you had earlier on?

    Brian Persson (12:30)
    Mindset’s everything. So that’s the very first thing that we work on ⁓ with clients when we work them through a workshop is where is your mindset? ⁓ And then, you know, you don’t necessarily have to like grow your mindset, but just recognize that, recognize where it is. And that will kind of define like what, how you should build your wealth. Maybe you’re the kind of mindset that’s, you know, just going to grow.

    crazy and you got all the motivation and the gumption to do it, well there’s a path for you. Maybe you like the nine to five, you want a really secure union job and there’s a different path for you there. So analyze your mindset, don’t beat yourself up about it and just accept kind of who you are. That’s the number one piece of advice I would give for any real estate investor because… ⁓

    Honestly, 80 % of the people out there probably shouldn’t be real estate investors. just, don’t have the grit. They don’t have the, the wherewithal to actually do the real estate properly. And so they should be more along lines of just accepting that and finding a good partner to, to go and ⁓ invest with instead of doing the investing for them.

    So just, just know who you are and know what your growth pattern is going to look like and accept that.

    It’ll be a lot easier for you in the future.

    Michelle Kesil (13:52)
    Absolutely.

    And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next in your business?

    Brian Persson (14:00)
    We’re focused on apartment buildings. That’s the big scale over the next couple of years. So we want to get it to a point where we have a team, we have ⁓ a number of different ⁓ buildings across Canada. Haven’t started looking into the United States yet, but we’re keeping our eye open there as well. But definitely that’s next couple of years is growth in apartment buildings so that we can help out both our own personal wealth and also people’s wealth in…

    in the sense that they’re feeling a little bit overwhelmed and they don’t know how to get into real estate. We really want to help those people out and make sure that they have access to investing in real estate that they maybe thought that they couldn’t actually get access to.

    Michelle Kesil (15:29)
    Yeah, definitely. And why specifically apartments? Is that like, why is that the asset class that you’re choosing?

    Brian Persson (15:36)
    scale. So we’re very good at residential real estate. So we’re not big fans of commercial, not big fans of industrial, ⁓ not big fans of development or other different real estate plays. So we like residential real estate because you have more clients. So for example, like in a commercial building of a similar price, you might have three clients. You might have three bays that you’re renting.

    in the exact same price point for a residential building, might have 20 residential units for the same thing. So, you know, if one resident exits that 20 unit building, it’s kind of a non-event. So you have a much more steady, much more predictable cash flow over the years. And you can watch large scale economics a little bit better and understand where people are migrating and start to predict.

    where you should invest your residential real estate money. then apartment buildings, like I said, just scale. We started with one units and then we went to two units, which worked out really well. And now we’re up into 14, 20 unit buildings and the stability of it and the ability to sort of pull more levers and press more buttons in a larger piece of real estate like that is just so much more accessible than like a single family house.

    Michelle Kesil (17:03)
    Definitely. And what are you most looking forward to for this year? Like any goals that you’re trying to hit or opportunities that you’re excited about?

    Brian Persson (17:12)
    Yeah, like kind of like I mentioned earlier, Alberta is booming. So we’re really looking to build by as many apartment buildings as we can this year. We are aiming for four new apartment buildings if we can find the right deals this year. And that’s that’s the big goal is to to bring on about four apartment buildings, which should translate into somewhere between 60 and 80 new units. That would be amazing if we can hit that goal.

    and bring on that kind of wealth for us and our clients.

    Michelle Kesil (17:48)
    Definitely. And yeah, when it comes to the clients that you support, ⁓ is that like in a similar strategy where it’s focusing on the apartments?

    Brian Persson (18:02)
    Yeah, so we’ve contemplated buying houses with the clients, but there’s just not usually enough meat in the deal to really make it valuable for the client. And we’re not big renovators. We don’t like to renovate if we don’t have to. So that’s one of the main ways to build value into a single-family residence.

    Apartment buildings you can like I said, you have more levers more buttons that you can press so it’s much much easier for a person to invest their money with us in an indoor apartment building and have a like significantly better return than it is for a single-family home So we’re really focused on the apartment buildings. ⁓ We know the space really well ⁓ it it’s Air quotes easy for us

    There’s no easy real estate, but we’ve done it long enough that we kind of know all the ins and outs and the dangers of investing into real estate we can handle and we know how to mitigate. that’s a really big benefit for us and for the clients is that ⁓ we’ve started to look at ourselves over last number of years as ⁓ risk mitigators and not so much like real estate investors. We were really out there to protect.

    the client’s investment and not necessarily like create the biggest deal and multifamily real estate is one of the best ways to do that.

    Michelle Kesil (19:34)
    Absolutely. What are some maybe challenges that you’ve experienced recently that you’ve now overcome?

    Brian Persson (19:45)
    ⁓ Time management I kind of touched on this but we’re right at a point where we’re trying to grow the team but there’s not enough deals in the system not enough money in the system and so we’re so a lot of that falls onto the business owner so as a small business owner as we are right now ⁓ time management is a big issue ⁓ and yeah it’s been a challenge over the last year for sure ⁓ I’ve managed to ⁓

    get the right coaches, find the right kind of ⁓ systems for myself when it comes to time management and ⁓ put in the right goals too. That was a big thing. It’s like, ⁓ instead of just working as hard as you can, like actually focusing on the right goals and the right actions, having someone direct me on that, ⁓ like a coach was a big, big deal for me. ⁓ It changed a lot about… ⁓

    how stressed I was, how much time I was actually having to put into the system. So yeah, and I think any new real estate investor will experience that is that time is a big deal when it comes to real estate. It always takes a lot more time to invest in real estate than you think. And you got to manage that right from the get go.

    Michelle Kesil (21:06)
    Absolutely. And do you have any specific marketing strategies or networking when it comes to finding the deals?

    Brian Persson (21:15)
    ⁓ Not particularly. ⁓ I’ve always ⁓ seen real estate as a very, very social activity and very social business. ⁓ I mean, it’s kind of second nature to me now. So maybe if I do have a strategy, it is just to kind of keep my foot on the pedal of networking. And I’m always out there meeting new realtors and meeting new mortgage brokers, meeting new insurance agents.

    ⁓ Everybody in the real estate field because you never know who you’re gonna meet. You never know what deal they have in their pocket ⁓ Like a recent example was ⁓ a golf tournament that I that I sponsored a hole for a local pizza shop here in our community and ⁓ They do a fantastic Like fundraiser for for different people around the community and I can’t remember exactly what his profession was but not not the kind of

    Profession you would expect them to have anything and all of sudden like, know outcomes this deal and this apartment building that I that I can start investigating Just through just through some golfer passing through my hole and having a quick conversation with him. So I’ve never Never like tried to analyze how valuable a person may or may not be I’ve always just got out there and networked and that that seems to like just draw in all the opportunities as as much as possible

    Michelle Kesil (22:45)
    Absolutely. I love that. That’s a fun way to do it.

    Brian Persson (22:49)
    Yeah, I’m just fun too. yeah. It fills the cup a little bit to get out there and meet a lot, meet people and meet new friends and acquaintances.

    Michelle Kesil (22:57)
    Absolutely.

    So before we wrap up here, if somebody wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?

    Brian Persson (23:07)
    Yeah, you can find us at weekendwealth.ca and you can email us at [email protected] or pretty well on any social media channel at weekend.wealth and you’ll find us there.

    Michelle Kesil (23:23)
    Perfect. Well, I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. Thank you so much for being here.

    Brian Persson (23:28)
    Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s been fun.

    Michelle Kesil (23:30)
    Of course. And for the listeners tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Brian who are building real businesses and we will see you on the next episode.

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