Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Nicole Middendorf | Treat Your Money Well And Your Money Will Treat You Well — Nicole Middendorf Shares Her Insights

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On this week’s episode of the Blue Collar Culture Podcast, we sit down with wealth advisor Nicole Middendorf. Nicole graduated from St. Cloud State University with an International Business and Marketing degree and began her career in the finance industry with Morgan Stanley before moving on to open her own practice in 2003.

When asked about why she came up with the idea of the Live It List t, Nicole responds, “It’s not just helping someone get to retirement, or get their kids to college. It’s really about helping people figure out what’s important about life, and what experiences they want to have.”

We chat further with Nicole about the Live It List, as well as…

  • The amazing results she has facilitated for her clients
  • The specific problems she is helping her clients solve
  • Myths about the finance industry
  • How shifting your mindset about money can help you achieve your goals, ease stress and help you live the life you truly desire
  • And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

Ryan Englin: Welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Culture Podcast. I'm your co-host, Ryan, Englin. I'm here with Jeremy Macliver.

Jeremy Macliver: Welcome back, everyone.

Ryan: I'm really excited to introduce today's guest. She works in an industry that has historically and is still very male-dominated. And there are a lot of institutional organizations out there really large organizations that are competing in her space, and they have a tendency to have a very narrow way of thinking about money. And what she's gonna do, she's gonna help us break the myth that money is complicated, money is scary, that it's something that you have to always be thinking about all the time, or you have to follow certain rules.

And she's got a really amazing way of working with her clients and helping them prepare for retirement so that they get to live life to the fullest. She actually does this by helping her clients create a Live It List, and I'm going to let her explain what that is. But Nicole, I want to thank you so much for being part of today's podcast. So please welcome Nicole Middendorf.

Nicole Middendorf: Thanks for having me.

Jeremy: Welcome, Nicole. Yeah, so as we jump into this, Nicole, I would love for you to tell us how the Live It List was born.

Birth of the Live It List

Nicole: So in 2010, my daughter was six months old and my son was two and I found myself more or less thrown into a world that I was not prepared for or planned then. I had been married to someone that I worked with. We were both financial advisors where he was more or less the branch manager of my company. I had been a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley and in 2003 left to start my own company, but my now ex-husband was my branch manager, and I am a survivor of domestic violence.

And so in 2010, my daughter was six months old, my son was two and I got them to bed and I sat down in my bedroom. I'm like, What just happened? How was I married for so long to someone and how did I lose myself. And I wasn't happy but from the outside, I was on radio, I was writing books. You know, in other people's eyes, I was successful.

You know, had the great house, the multiple cars, the boat, you know, all this stuff, but I was just miserable and completely unhappy on the inside. And so I'm like, Okay, I gotta figure out how I'm gonna get myself out of this. What, let me write down and redo my bucket list. Because when I was in high school in college, I was a figure skater. I just was always, I just always been very driven and overachiever type A. I've just always been very motivated.

And I always had lists of things that I would do and accomplish. And so I wrote down 12 things. And I said, Okay, I'm gonna do these, I'm going to do one a month on my bucket list, and I wrote down 12 things on my bucket list. Well, one of them was to drive a race car. And so I had lunch with my best friend from college. I'm like, Hey, you know, I need to get myself back. I need to boost my confidence back. Like, I don't know how I ended up in this place. I'm totally unhappy. And so here's my bucket list.

And one of the things is to drive a racecar. Will you go up to northern Minnesota with me and drive a racecar? And he's like, Nic, anything you do, you don't just put 100% into it. You put 180. You need to go to a real speedway. And I'm like, okay, what's that? Because still to this day, I don't know how to drive a stick shift. I knew nothing about racecars. And he's like, well go to Vegas. I'm like, Okay, so my parents moved into my house. Thought we'd get them to take care of the kids and I booked a flight to Vegas.

And he wouldn't come with me so I went by myself. And you know when you're on a plane and someone's sitting next to you, and they have to talk to you the whole time? That is what I had on the flight out to Vegas. And this gentleman, it was cool. He actually ended up becoming a client of mine, but he couldn't understand why I was flying to Vegas just to drive a racecar. And he's like, you're not going out there to gamble? And I'm like, No, I'm a financial advisor. I gamble every day with people's money. I don't need to gamble in Vegas.

And he's he just couldn't understand it. And so eventually, I said, I rewrote my bucket list and I'm doing one thing a month, for a year. And he's like, I'm so sorry. Like, you're just so young. Is it cancer? And so I that moment, I was like, I can't do this. Like, I can't go around doing one thing a month telling people and doing one thing a month on my bucket list because when you say bucket list, people think you're done. And I don't plan to die till I'm 104. Like, this is just not gonna work. And so when I landed, I texted Catherine, my chief marketing officer and I said, I can't do this.

Like, let's call it something. So she came up with the Live It List. We eventually then did trademark it. And now fast forward, I have my own foundation and I grant Live It List experiences. And we do experiences as a team of my employees, we do them with clients, I did them with my kids. It's just all encompassed and the whole concept then once I took the Live It List where it is today, I learned a couple statistics that just made me really sad. One is that one in three Americans is happy. And I'm just like, that's just horrible.

We live in this, you know, amazing place that, you know, you can own a business if you want. You know, you can be as successful as you want. You got freedoms that other people don't have, and why are we so unhappy? And I would just then watch so many clients be so focused on money and thinking, you know, and telling me like, Oh, well, when I sell my business, I'll be happy or Oh, when I retire, I'll be happy or Oh, if I get 100 grand of revenue or when I get this account, then I'll be happy or when I'm a millionaire, then I'll be happy.

And I'm like, No, like, I need to help people be happy today. And so that's, and then I also did learn that the statistic that, or the study that if you spend money on experiences, you're going to be happier than if you spend money on things. And so that's where the Live It List has just become an integral part of my mission and our financial plan, that it's not just helping someone get to retirement or get their kids to college or get the cabin or whatever it is.

It's really helping people figure out what's on their Live It List and what's important about life and what experiences do they want to have so they're not living life with regrets and they're living life to their fullest. So it's just this really cool thing that, you know, just came from a horrible place where I was personally in life and just didn't help me get out of my bad space. And I've taken it and it's really made a huge impact and just hopefully helped change people how they think about money and make it more fun and more interesting.

Jeremy: This is great, Nicole. I hope we get to hear some of the stories of some different people that have lived something in their Live It List. So obviously, you're a financial wealth planner. Most of them you know, we're looking at how do we get to retirement? How do we get to those, you know, sunset years? And I remember driving my wife one day and I said, Honey, there was a song playing on it had something about those good old days and I looked at I said, How did you realize we're living in those good old days today?

Like, that song is an old person talking about us. Like we better make it happen today because hat's what we're talking about here. So it's interesting that you take this from a financial wealth perspective. And I definitely do find that money is, you know, the way we view the world is the way we view our money. And so share a little bit of how this plays into your wealth planning strategies.

Shifting Money Mindsets

Nicole: Well, so I mean, so many days I feel like I'm a therapist and it's really inspiring people to think about money a little bit differently. And it can be anything from, you know, looking at first, what's your I was asked, one of the questions I was asked is what's your favorite money memory? Or, and this isn't to be a favorite, but when you think of your money, what, you know the first time that you have a memory of it, like what do you think of? And for me, I have two that I mean, have a bunch of them that stand out, but two that really stand out.

One is I lost a tooth and I put the tooth on, you know, underneath my pillow, and I woke up in the morning there was a $2 bill. And I grabbed the $2 bill and I went running down the hallway yelling and screaming for my dad. And he's like, what's wrong? What's wrong? I'm like I got gypped. I thought the $2 bill was fake money, play money. And my dad was like No no honey. Like, you got a $2 bill because you're special. And he then brought me into, in my parents' bedroom, they had like a dresser that had this top shelf that was like a hidden shelf. And in there, he had like stacks and stacks and stacks of $2 bills.

And so I then for some reason, just always collected $2 bills. And then, you know, did the same thing when my kids last their tooth as well. But my kids thought the $2 bill was special, they didn't think they got jipped, like I did. And then the other money memory that I have is, I was always in like the honors classes or the advanced placement classes growing up, the challenge classes. And for some reason one day in our math class, I was with everyone else. I was with our whole class. And the teacher called me up to the chalkboard and said, Hey, I want you to do this problem.

You know, you're from the honors class, you know, you'll be able to do it correctly. Show everyone in the class how to do it. So I did it and I was proud of it. And I sat down. And as I sat down, I was looking, I was like, Oh, I had realized I'd made a mistake and he wouldn't let me go fix it. And so I sat there and the teacher made this humongous deal out of it. Like how could this honor student do this problem incorrectly?

And oh, my gosh. And so it was at that moment that I, from then forward after sixth grade, I was never in honors or advanced placement math ever again. It was at that moment that I was like, I can't do math. This teacher said I can't do math. And I then always then said, well, later on, I can't do money because I can't do math. So I think that's one of the reasons that I am such a great wealth advisor is because I always have those feelings and I know what that felt like to be very intimidated over money.

And here's an industry I never planned on being a wealth advisor. I wanted to go to law school I wanted to be, like, work for the UN, be like Madeleine Albright or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I wanted to make change. But I married someone that was a financial advisor and that's how I got into this career. It's not something that I ever planned on. And so that's what's so cool about it now is I really made it my own and making a difference in people's lives and really inspiring and helping them with money and making change, just in a different way.

And it's helping people think about what happened to you in the past? What happened, how do you think about money? How do you experience it? And what can you do about it so that you can achieve happiness or that you can get where you want to go or that you can be successful so that it's not something that's overwhelming or intimidating? And because I constantly, you know, preach like if you take care of your money, your money is going to take care of you. And that's just as simple as like, my kids will get irritated because very rarely nowadays, are we using cash, but I was traveling with my kids, and we were using cash.

And when I'm handed back cash, when you're checking out somewhere, I always take time to take the money and they'll hand you the bills, be at one, five, 10, 50, whatever, and they're usually backwards upside down, not necessarily in the same direction and I'm taking them and I'm putting them in my wallet in the correct order, all facing the same way, all chronologically correct. Because if you treat your money, well, your money is going to treat you well. And it's simple things like that, but it psychologically can make a huge impact and make a huge difference.

Jeremy: So I have a question. And I'm interested in how you handle this one because I've, you know, I've heard this from so many wealth managers out there. And sometimes I've had, you know, let's just ask it. So I like Starbucks. And I know that if you go to Starbucks every day at five bucks, you can do the math on this right? It's 25 bucks and what's the end up in a lifetime? Like, you're making a million-dollar mistake. How do you view the Starbucks question?

Nicole: Well, I don't drink coffee so I don't have an issue with that.

Jeremy: So no, but for somebody else, that's their thing.

Examine Your Spending Habits

Nicole: But until I worked with a personal trainer and had to write down how many calories, I would go, and I'd have a hot chocolate and then once I had to write down for my trainer how many calories a hot chocolate was, I stopped having chocolate. So no, it's I mean, it's with anything. It's what makes you happy.

And if it if you would rather spend money every single day getting a cup of coffee and that inspires you to be greater or makes you a better person and it doesn't sacrifice your retirement or it doesn't sacrifice that car you want or it doesn't sacrifice taking a vacation or what, you know, whatever it is with your goals that you have, if that's what truly makes you happy, then do it. It's everything in balance. Where people get into trouble is they generally lose consciousness of their money. And so how many times have you ever had it that you get a credit card bill in the mail and you're shocked at how much it is?

I mean, you know, it happens to me too, but and how many, or how many times have you gone to the store and you're thinking, Okay, I'm going to spend, you know, X number of dollars, and you go to the store, especially if you bring your children with, and you walk out spending a lot more than you planned on? And so it's, and if you do that every single day, you sometimes can lose track of how much you've spent. And so that's why it's so important to have a system that works for you.

And so, you know, many business owners will use QuickBooks, you know, some people use Excel, you know, there's the app. I mean, you just got to find a system that works for you that you can then track and see and have a plan. And if within your plan, you've got it within your budget, and it's important you have that cup of coffee every day and it doesn't dilute the other things that you want in your life, then go for it. But $7 a day for 42 years is over a million bucks. So

Jeremy: it's a lot of money.

Nicole: Is that worth it for you? And for some people it is. That's what they want. That's what's important to them. And that's not right or wrong. It's all driven by what's important to you and what makes you happy.

Jeremy: Yeah, I was really just interested on how you answered that with your Live It List and how that works. Because I agree, it's a ridiculous amount of money. That's almost enough to scare you say I don't ever do that. But I also encourage people like, if that's the thing, then you can have the other five things too like if something's in moderation, like, you know what, if this going to Starbucks and sitting down and spending the five bucks is gonna make life worth living, well do it. Because who cares if you are a millionaire that's upset and unhappy. So

Ryan: You know, Nicole, I was listening to your story and how you got to where you are. And what I really loved about it was that you actually pursued your passion to help people with this, but it was really rooted in the reason you got into it in the first place. And the kids and, we talked a little bit about just disrupting the industry.

And one of the things that we run into a lot, so there's a lot of business owners listening to this right now and I think a lot of times, I know for me as well, I get really obsessed with the business and focusing on the next goal and next result and I lose focus of my why, the reason I started all of this. And I tell my clients a lot, don't let your reason why be your reason why not.

Because it's so easy to lose focus of that when it comes to money because that's usually the reason that I hear people started, they wanted to make more than they were making when they were working for someone else, they wanted to offer a legacy for their kids, they want to have a better retirement, that was really the reason they got started. And now we get caught in this daily grind and sometimes we lose sight of that. What are some of the things that you consult with business owners around the mindset around money so that we can start controlling it and it can stop controlling us?

Nicole: That's a great question. And it's one, you used one of my favorite words is disrupting. I mean, that's where, you know, I love trying to do things differently and have people think about things differently. And so it's always, I always help people answer the question of like, what if. And it's not necessarily taking it from like a negative standpoint, but like, you know what if something happens to me?

What if something, if you're in a business partnership, what if something happens to your business partner? What happens if something happens to like one of your key employees? Or if you own the building, what if the building burns down? And so if you're walking through all of these different what-if scenarios and it can, you can even take that from a personal standpoint as well.

You know, what if something happens to my significant other or my children or a medical emergency or whatever, once you answer all of those what-ifs, it'll help you come up with a plan and it will help make things, most people are going to sleep at night a little bit better because they're a little bit more grounded of like, Okay, if this x, y, z all happens, I'm still going to be fine. And it really then allows you hopefully, to then focus on what's really important. And the other big thing is taking things away from yourself. Reading the book Traction for me was like a game-changer.

Because I was always the one that like knew everything. Like I knew how How much money was coming in, I knew, you know, distributions for clients that were over 70 and a half what was going out. I knew the, you know, prospective clients, all the events, like everything that we're doing. And as a single parent, I was like sleep-deprived. And I'm like, this is not working. And so once I read that book, it was a total game-changer for me, because, and that happens almost every single day.

I mean, that happened like right before I came in to take this podcast with you is, you know, one of my team members was told me about, you know, the assets that were coming into the firm. It's like, that's awesome. Like, they're tracking all of these things because what that does, is it frees up my time so that I can focus on what's really truly important. And for me, it's meeting with some of our clients individually, it's the big picture planning, it's how, what else can I do to disrupt the financial services industry? What else can I do to make an impact? To leave a legacy? To help inspire people and grow the Live It List from the national stage?

Is the endpoint even greater? And how, where else can I be doing speaking engagements or various different opportunities to spread the word to help inspire people so that they can be happy and they can have the success. And so, it's all about really staying focused and staying present, and not getting so bogged down in the day to day weeds. And for me, that's one of the reasons I love to travel. Because when I travel, I hop on a plane and that's when I bring that information with me.

And I just sit down and like, Okay, this is where I, this is what happened this last quarter. This is where I was a year ago. This is where I was two years ago. And these are my goals, my business plan. And what am I doing? What do I need to adjust? What do I need to change? And that keeps you focused and more present so that you're working, not so much in the business, but that you're, you can be working on the business.

Ryan: That's great. And I want to go back to this disruptive thing because I'm a big fan of disruption as well. What, you know, what is it the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? And sometimes you really need just something that that game-changing idea or that habit that is really going to set you up for achieving your goals. So what are one or two things that you do that is disruptive in the way you coach your clients around money or even get them to think about money?

Disrupting Conventional Approaches to Money

Nicole: Well, one is the whole Live It List, you know, that we, just we, we take so much more of a psychological approach to money. And so not that it's therapy. Some meetings feels like it is, but it's more a whole, a real true holistic approach to financial planning. And so, you know, being a business owner, it's looking at, like I just had some clients in a few weeks ago and they had, they've been clients of mine since I was at Morgan Stanley.

And so I, you know, the wife was talking about how she's like Nicole. She's like, you remember, she goes, you remember 17 years ago when things were really bad. And she goes, we were taking money from this line of credit to pay this line, to pay this mortgage. And, you know, she's like, you've seen us through the lean times and you saw some of the great times, and they now are selling the business and completely getting out of it.

And so it's focused on what's really important. And yes, we're dealing with the details, but it's looking at the big picture of things and what really makes the biggest impact for them. But I just love to disrupt things from an industry standpoint, because it used to be like, a financial advisor, we were called stockbrokers. And back at Morgan Stanley, you know, you didn't have access to information that you do today. You know, you'd have to call to buy a stock or sell a stock and, you know, things have changed. And so now it's so much more financial planning.

And really, I'm trying to take the industry that a financial planner, the wealth advisor, that's the person that's really leading the whole team. And, you know, you're coordinating your CPA, your business attorney, your estate planning attorney, your real estate attorney, all of these people together, so that it's not just this disconnect, and that you, as a business owner, not trying to figure this all out yourself and try to coordinate all of these people that really I'm trying to change it that the wealth advisor is that lead person.

I'm also doing a few things, not just from like a disrupting a content standpoint and how do people think about money and really inspiring them with the whole Live It List, but also how do people receive that information? And how does wealth management actually happen? Just because things are so much more online and the data is so much more prevalent and things happen so much faster than they did, how do we actually disseminate that information? And how do we make some impact with that?

Ryan: Oh, that's cool. So I know there's people listening to us right now and they're thinking, you know what, yeah, I got to have a plan. I've got to have someone quarterbacking my financial plan and my retirement plan and my Live It List and all of these things we've talked about. So how do they get ahold of you if they're interested in having that conversation with you and how you and your team may be able to help them?

Nicole: They can just go to prosperwell.com and just email me or call the office. You can also go to nicolemiddendorf.com. Either website links back and forth but that's where we have tons of, we have a newsletter that goes out every week, there's blogs, there's webinars, there's tons of articles. But you can always email me with a question. And I sure am here to help.

Ryan: That's amazing. Well, hey, thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation we had today. I love some of the things that you're doing and just your approach to it, how you keep it connected to the reason you got started. I think that's such a great example for a lot of us business owners. I just want to thank you again, really enjoyed it. And we'll look forward to connecting in the future.

Nicole: Yeah. Thank you.

Jeremy: Thank you so much, Nicole.

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