It's me, Bri!

Hello and welcome to homeowner AF, the podcast that bridges the gap between driven single income women and nonbinary folks and home ownership in Canada.

I'm Brianna Goslin, mortgage agent and educator, and I tell the stories of these incredible women for manifestation to moving in. I'm so happy you're here. Buckle up and get ready to learn with me, because I am nosy AF.

Hey everybody. Welcome to my debut episode of Homeowner AF. I'm Brianna Goslin, mortgage agent, educator, entrepreneur, feminist mom. And I am a lot of things, but we'll start there. I start every day with gratitude, and I'm going to keep suit in starting this podcast with saying thank you for taking the time to press play on homeowner AF, and I hope that you find so much value in these 30 minutes we're about to spend together. Before getting into the nitty gritty of what to expect in this podcast, I thought I'd give you folks an idea of who I am, where I've been, where I'm going, and why should you be listening to homeowner AF? If you know me socially or professionally, hey, thanks for coming. But if you don't, then I'm going to give you a little insight into who I am. First of all, I am a lot. I am very positive. I am super energetic and it may shock you to know that I am actually an introvert. That means that my brain is always going. I'm always thinking I need a lot of alone time to process. But then when I'm in a social setting. It's go time and I absolutely love it. I share this to give you a little bit of insight into why, when I was a teacher, my job just didn't fit, and why, now that I'm a mortgage agent, it feels like the Sky's the limit. So growing up, I never really had a dream of my career. I had a dream of having a family, a happy home, maybe a pool in my backyard, but certainly I didn't have career aspirations. When I started university I was so fortunate to be bilingual and I took my English degree and decided to stick around at Nipissing University to also take my teachers college certifications. So low and behold, when I finished teachers college I got hired. Work in Durham region at the school Board Catholic School Board down there and I

spent an incredible almost 10 years as a T as a French immersion teacher. I worked with the most amazing people and I learned so much in my time in education. I also had two children and got married and purchased my first home. In this time. I think all of this would have been a little bit more difficult had I started as a mortgage agent. So again, there's that gratitude piece. I am so grateful to have had that experience and to have met all those incredible children and families and colleagues. And they've really. Added to my life and kind of my toolbox of what I use daily now, and I'll tell you a little bit about that and how that ties in here. My strength as a teacher was and is not my organization. It was definitely my ability to see a problem and then quickly find a solution. Unfortunately, in education, if any teachers are listening, the time from inception of idea to execution is really super long because there's a lot of red tape because it's government, right? So this was a little bit of a back and forth for me in my mind because it was really difficult, I found, to carry out the things that I wanted to on a daily basis in my classroom for the incredible kids who were in front of me. Now, COVID kind of compounded that and then we had the back and forth between online and in person learning and it was a bit of a mess. I was incredibly fortunate at this time to work with a colleague and friend of mine. Shout out hey Carly who? She shared the same vision for problem solving that I did. She's incredibly tech savvy, and I learned a ton from her because together we developed a program to kind of replace summer school as

an online program to help students bridge the gaps. That kind of. Became large throughout the pandemic. I'm sharing this experience because this started kind of the spark that brought me to wanting to solve problems. For other people, for adults, for families. While this was happening in my professional life, my personal life had kind of blown up. I was dealing with my mental health, I was dealing with a ton of anxiety with relationship problems and my family relationships. It was all kind of a mess. So I knew I needed a change. At this point my husband and I are looking for a home. We decide to move away from Durham region and after a long and arduous journey of trying to find a home in during the pandemic, we settled on Muskoka and we purchased our dream home. This was the first action in a bunch of actions that kind of dominoes in effect to create the life that I have right now.

A year ago today I was studying to get my mortgage agent certification. I was reading an incredible book by Gary Vaynerchuk called crushing it. You should pick it up if you're an entrepreneur, especially if you're interested in building an online presence. Also, if you're a parent who has a kid who's obsessed with YouTube, you should be reading this book. Thank me later. Anyways, a year ago that's what I was doing and I started to dream. Now remember, I had never dreamed of. My career, I had always thought of a career as a means to an end, to make money, to collect a great pension, to have benefits. And that was kind of what my career, the place that my career held in my life. Now things are really different.

So the first step, once you get licensed or before you're licensed, if you're a go hard like me and you like to have things all lined up and ready to go, you have to research brokerages. So that's what I did. I obsessively researched brokerages for about a week, I interviewed with a handful of them, and I landed on pineapple, which is my new community, my new family, and where I found my amazing team that supports me every day. I'm sure I will get into pineapple and what makes it absolutely in an incredible place for me in subsequent podcasts. But today we're just going to say that I found a great team, I'm very happy I'm there, and I started to learn very quickly about the industry and all of the possibility that lies within mortgages and real estate for me. The other thing that I started to notice as I began to work with clients was who was missing as an educator, of course, this is always kind of the lens that I shine on a problem or on a situation. And I noticed that there were literally no single women who I was working with. I worked with single men, I worked with couples, I worked with groups of men. But I had yet to interact with as a mortgage agent, a single. Woman. So I know this is homeowner AF, but I am also curious or nosy AF. So I went to my girlfriends who had bought homes by themselves, and I started asking questions. Why did you decide to buy a home by yourself? When

did it become possible? What were the barriers to homeownership for you? Did I tell you I'm an introvert? Yes. I go really deep when I have conversations with someone. So if you're a potential podcast guest, I'm saying sorry in advance.

Anywho, I'm talking to these single women. I'm asking them tons of questions and the same answers keep coming up when I'm asking about what their journey looked like, most of them just didn't know what they didn't know. They weren't exposed to the strategies and the ways that people are acquiring real estate and building wealth. It seems like these conversations are happening in back rooms and the aim of this podcast is to pull those. Conversations out and to deliver them to you in a woman's voice. Because if you are a woman or a nonbinary person, you know it makes a difference.

So I'm going to share this quote with you. And this quote comes from John C Maxwell, who was an evangelical Christian preacher who doesn't necessarily align with my view of the world. But these words are gold. Here it is. You are most powerfully positioned to serve who you once were. I don't know about the rest of you real estate professionals listening, but I think we were all once people who did not own a home. I specifically was a female making a great salary who did not own a home. I recognize my privilege in buying a home with my eventual spouse. That put me in a completely different category. But before I met my husband Kevin, I was thinking, Oh my goodness, I'm going to rent in the GTA forever. Girl, that point of view is bleak. If this is you, please do not press stop. Please keep listening, because we're going to get you to more of a growth mindset. And because I once was you, I get it and I can help you from the point where you are now. I think it's really important when you start anything to be realistic about where you are currently living, but also to hold that powerful dream in your mind as you make a plan to get there.

So that's where I come in. And here's my first little bit of homework for you, homeowner. Because you are a homeowner, it might just take a little time. Here's your first assignment. In the show notes, I've linked my budgeting template. Whether you are saving for your down payment, whether you already own a home and you want to buy another one, or whether you are almost ready to get house hunting, you need to know what your monthly income is and what your monthly expenses are. This will give us. A grounding in reality before we start dreaming about your future home and then building the plan to get there.

OK, now that you know who I am and what I'm going to be doing for you, let me tell you what to expect from homeowner AF this season. foremostly, you will be inspired when you listen to this podcast. I have phenomenal guests lined up who are single income female homeowners themselves and they're going to tell you exactly how they did it. Now we're not going to mince words and we're not going to mince numbers. My aim is to be completely transparent. I'm going to tell you guys what kind of down payment these women put down, what kind of mortgage they got, where did they purchase and. Was it affordable for them? I'm going to ask them what they wish they knew and who was on their team when they purchased their home. In addition to telling the stories of these awesome females, I'm also going to speak to professionals in the real estate and finance space. These professionals are going to not only tell their entrepreneurial stories, which I am so jacked up about, they're also going to give you tidbits that are going to push the needle forward to you living in that first home.

So guys, I guess I got to get vulnerable and share my goals with you. My goal with this podcast is firstly to become a better mortgage agent. I want to learn about so many things and why not share the knowledge with you folks as well? I also want to be a ****** business owner. I mean, I am a *** *** business owner, but it gets better. I'm going to talk about how to scale your business, about marketing strategies, about how to use social media, and I'm going to ask my guests. About their thoughts on this too, because again, I'm nosy AF the third component and my third goal is real estate investing. I would love to own multiple properties, multiple doors, and to be able to create affordable housing in my community. That is a huge goal of mine. It is lofty and I'll get there.

If you're like me and you're into sharing your goals and celebrating the successes of other women and nonbinary folks, then you have to join my Facebook community. It's LinkedIn, the show notes, and the premise of this community is that we ask the questions that were too afraid to ask in mixed spaces. We celebrate each other. Sometimes we ***** about the market because it's rough out there, but if you want to join something like that, then please click the link. You'll be asked to leave your e-mail and to answer a couple of questions. But you will get access to the entire community, as well as all of the replays of my webinars that I've hosted throughout the year.

Folks, this brings me to the end of my very first episode and again, I just want to say thank you so much. If you want to get in touch with me, hit the show notes. All of my information is there. Please do your homework before next week so that we can get to dreaming. And until next time, This has been homeowner AF. Now go get busy AF and I will see you next week.