Join host Steven Pesavento and special guest Nicole Reuth in this episode of Wealth Unveiled. Nicole shares her inspiring journey from a childhood of challenges to becoming one of Colorado's top mortgage brokers. Explore the key takeaways, from overcoming financial hurdles to navigating the emotional roller coaster of market shifts. Gain insights into building an abundance mindset, investing wisely, and crafting a life of freedom.
Key Takeaways
Resources Mentioned
Interested in connecting with other like-minded individuals? Then join our VonFinch Private Capital Network. Learn more at http://www.vonfinch.com/invest.
About our Guest:
Nicole Reuth is a seasoned entrepreneur and Colorado's leading mortgage broker. With over a decade of experience, Nicole's journey reflects resilience, determination, and a commitment to empowering others. From overcoming childhood struggles to building a successful business and real estate portfolio, Nicole is passionate about inspiring individuals to break through limitations and create a life of abundance.
Download your free strategy guide, The Passive Investor Playbook at http://www.vonfinch.com/playbook
00;00;00;23 - 00;00;08;22
Steven Pesavento
Welcome back to the Investor Mindset podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Passive and Joe. And today I have Nicole Ruth in the studio. How you doing today, Nicole?
00;00;08;24 - 00;00;11;24
Nicole Reuth
my gosh. So good. So good. Thanks for having me.
00;00;11;27 - 00;00;34;08
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, it's great to have you on here. We're both in Colorado. We're both doing some type of real estate or we'll talk a little bit about kind of what you're up to and all those things. But before we get into all the things on business and investing, tell me when you look back, what experiences or influences from your childhood shaped who you are today?
00;00;34;10 - 00;00;54;13
Nicole Reuth
gosh. Well, this year you just weren't right for the hook at the very beginning. Tell me about your childhood. Wow. So you know what? It's so interesting. The older you get, the more I'm convinced that your childhood absolutely shaped you. I would have said it, didn't. I think I would have ignored it in my twenties and thirties.
00;00;54;13 - 00;01;20;22
Nicole Reuth
Now that I'm in my fifties, I get it. How the whole thing circles. As a kid, I was raised by a single mom who is a very strong, very strong Greek Catholic New Yorker. So this woman was determined to to fight and to win. And she was divorced. She was in sales. We were living from paycheck to paycheck.
00;01;20;25 - 00;01;39;20
Nicole Reuth
She, you know, kind of we had to move from New York. A whole nother personal story. I won't get into it, but we moved New York to Texas. my gosh. The culture shock from New York to Texas back in the eighties was a big one. And and she just plowed through and we moved a lot. We didn't own a home.
00;01;39;20 - 00;02;20;24
Nicole Reuth
We rented, as I mentioned, living paycheck to paycheck also came with getting groceries from the church or being on food stamps. And I didn't see that as as a depression thing. I didn't even see it as a negative thing. It was just my life, you know, You just accepted it. And then to where I am today, understanding the power and the opportunity and the strength now that I've received from having gone through all that, and then also my determination to help more women specifically, but really anyone get out of their own way and out of their own stories and put themselves in a position where they have abundance.
00;02;21;00 - 00;02;31;04
Nicole Reuth
So that abundance mindset, she she was an incredible woman, but she also had a unlimited mindset and was trying to break through that for most of my growing up.
00;02;31;06 - 00;02;59;26
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, I the experiences we have when we were kids absolutely shaped so much of how we see the world. I know personally my drive comes from growing up. You know, single mother of four moved every 2 to 4 years. My whole life. When you have that type of experience of having to adapt, you also have a beautiful example of exactly the things that you do want, the things you don't want, which I find is a big driver.
00;02;59;26 - 00;03;22;29
Steven Pesavento
And so I know you run a business, you're mortgage broker, you're one of the number one lenders in Colorado. Tell me, what was that path for you going from that life, that way of growing up to, I'm going to go plant my own shingle, I'm going to hire people, I'm going to take risk and I try to build some of my own.
00;03;22;29 - 00;03;48;12
Nicole Reuth
So I didn't start in that direction. But you land there. Most people in mortgage lending will tell you that they fell into mortgage lending one way or another. Now, I came out of college, I went to UT-Austin and I came out with a finance degree and I went into corporate America and I did that for ten years. And then I got out of working and did some part time gigs, and I raised my three kids for about five years before I was like, okay, I've done it.
00;03;48;14 - 00;04;05;13
Nicole Reuth
You get off the floor, I need to go back to work. I called up a good friend of mine and I said, You know, I just need to get off the floor. What do you got? And he's like, I need a bookkeeper, but that seems beneath you. And I was like, I'll take it. So he ended up he had a little broker shop.
00;04;05;13 - 00;04;22;27
Nicole Reuth
So that's how I got into mortgage lending. I worked for him for a number of years and then eventually I opened up my own broker shop. Back then, this was really kind of before the licensing. You only had to be registered by the state of Colorado on that during the eight situation. And and then I just started kind of getting more into sales.
00;04;22;27 - 00;04;44;25
Nicole Reuth
So I started out in Ops and then I moved over to sales and we started building this thing. Once I decided that I was all in, we started building it with more clear focus and drive and it started to grow Every year for the last 14 years, except for this past, one had been on a growth trajectory to the point to where I had 40 people working for me.
00;04;44;27 - 00;05;14;23
Nicole Reuth
You know, we crushed about 400 million as a single producer. That's massive. The people that were under me were all working towards that same goal of helping those clients. I was the only loan officer in the team. And I think the thing that allowed me to grow to that level was the lack of fear. Like I'd been at the bottom, like I'd seen I know what food stamps feels like and I didn't want to return there, but I know it's not death.
00;05;14;23 - 00;05;25;21
Nicole Reuth
I know it's just food stamps inserts. It takes some of that fear out and you get to a point where you don't want to lose it all. But at the same time, you know, you could recover if you did.
00;05;25;21 - 00;05;44;23
Steven Pesavento
Yeah. There's something so powerful when you actually sit down and fear storm or look at, well, what's the worst case scenario? If everything falls apart and nothing works out, it's like, worst case, I'm going to have to go get a job like this. I'm going to be doing this kind of a thing versus what's the upside potential of where things can go.
00;05;44;23 - 00;06;10;02
Steven Pesavento
And I think another thing to underline is just the power of that compounding. Like if you're continually growing over 14 years, that compound of fact adds a leading into a business that's quite profitable. You've got a bunch of great people working for you and it doesn't all have to happen at once. And I feel like a lot of people, they get stuck in this feeling where it's like, I need to go from here to here and I need to go by tomorrow.
00;06;10;02 - 00;06;34;17
Steven Pesavento
And it's like with that kind of a mindset, you're setting yourself up to fail. Now it's possible to do just about anything, but in the investing world, it's like if you take 100,000 and you invest it and double that every three years, you know, in in, in four cycles in in 12 years, I mean, you're looking at, you know, over $1.6 million off of that $100,000 investment.
00;06;34;17 - 00;07;00;17
Steven Pesavento
And so it can really change the game when you start looking long term. What I'm curious about is the mortgage industry today. We're reporting this mid-January of 2024, we're experiencing the highest rates we've seen in a decade. Very challenging environment. What has shifted in the business other than obviously productions got to be down, what has shifted and what have you taken away from that so far?
00;07;00;17 - 00;07;24;07
Nicole Reuth
Yes, we saw I mean, we saw interest rates in 8% in 2023 and at the end of 2023, right before the end of the year, the rates had dropped from 8% to seven, eight, seven, 8 to 6.6. And so that was pretty substantial. And we've been at 6.6 for the last, say, 35 days, give or take. So about five weeks.
00;07;24;09 - 00;07;48;08
Nicole Reuth
And then just this past week, they've started popping back up again. Now we're at 6.95. The perspective is, is that did we come down too fast? Remember, Fed Chair Powell came out saying that the Fed board believes that they're going to drop the Fed rate three times in 2024. And the really the dot plot showed it pushed towards the second half of the year.
00;07;48;11 - 00;08;13;00
Nicole Reuth
The investors or the market came out. They heard that immediately. They're like he just said, six rate drops as soon as March. And we're like, But he didn't say that. You said three at the tail end. So the market heard something different than what was said and it rallied and it dropped the rate substantially. And now I think we're giving some of that back as the market is having to swallow some of that and realize that that's not necessarily the case.
00;08;13;02 - 00;08;32;13
Nicole Reuth
All that to get back to the question as far as what's changed, there's been a ton of emotional roller coaster. When you have rates that, you know, had gone from 2.6, five or 2.6 to 2.75, all the way up over the course of a year and a half to 8%.
00;08;32;13 - 00;08;37;01
Nicole Reuth
like the series or the stages of loss and grief, right?
00;08;37;01 - 00;08;56;16
Nicole Reuth
It's it's the my gosh, it's a shock. And then it's the panic and then it's the I missed my opportunity and then it's the anger and bitterness. And we were having to deal with clients and ourselves going through all of this. And then when we saw rates drop from 8% to 6.6, it was the rally and the joy and the excitement.
00;08;56;16 - 00;09;26;24
Nicole Reuth
And and then consumer sentiment just came out last Friday for December, all that same period of time. And all of a sudden the exuberance was back. The stock market hits another record high and everybody's super excited. So to pull yourself out of that and instead of riding that roller coaster with the Americans and with the consumer spending and with all of that and how it affects our business because our businesses, I mean, at two years ago, we closed just under 400 million.
00;09;26;29 - 00;09;58;05
Nicole Reuth
2023, we'll have closed just over 100 million. So we're off, you know, 75%, which is massive. But there's things I can control and then there's things I can't control. I can't control interest rates, and I can't control the overall confidence of a home buyer right now. So what we're having conversations today to go, okay, whether or not you bought in, more than likely you didn't because your first time home buyer and you felt robbed and then cheated and felt like you missed out and you could no longer afford it.
00;09;58;05 - 00;10;14;01
Nicole Reuth
And whether you're a first time home buyer, a first time investor or multi investor, you're looking at the cash flow and the cap rate. They're not as sexy as they used to be. So you're removing all of that and you're saying, I'll just wait until it gets better. Well, now we're at this point to where we're like, I don't know if it's going to get better.
00;10;14;02 - 00;10;36;09
Nicole Reuth
Like, I mean, our home prices right now, home prices are just 1% off from all time highs here locally in Colorado, nationwide. And they continue to hit all time highs. Interest rates are come down. But in the meantime, property taxes and homeowner's insurance is going up. So is affordability going to get better or do we realize at some point, what am I waiting for?
00;10;36;09 - 00;11;06;13
Nicole Reuth
What's the cost to me for the next ten, 20, 30 years? As you heard me mention this multiplication of benefits, What's the cost to me if I continue to wait when we might just have seen the bottom, regardless of what rates do? So we're having a lot of those conversations. That's a change. I think it's it's getting off the emotional roller coaster and getting back into a period of analysis or strategy, right or wrong or indifferent.
00;11;06;13 - 00;11;19;24
Nicole Reuth
I mean, the market is what the market is. And and I don't know that we're going to lose home values at this point. Too many homes are locked up with too low of interest rates and they'll never sell. And inventory will be a problem for years to come.
00;11;19;26 - 00;11;53;24
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, it's an interesting dilemma because the people who don't own assets don't benefit from the massive amounts of inflation that's happening or that compounding growth that does happen. So, you know, people waited, people try to time the market. One of the biggest mistakes is trying to time the market. Even when you're an expert, it's difficult. I've been investing for nearly a decade and I couldn't have told you that in 2022 they were going to have the fastest rise of rates and therefore everything purchased directly before that would be the top of the market.
00;11;53;26 - 00;12;25;19
Steven Pesavento
From a value standpoint, when we're talking about buying commercial multifamily because that market is very different. It does fluctuate in value very closely with interest rates because these loans are typically shorter term 3 to 5, 5 to 7, ten year term. So it's an interesting world because ironically, people have pulled back dramatically for making investments in 2023 because they realized they potentially invested at the high in 2022 and they want to wait and see what happens.
00;12;25;21 - 00;13;06;18
Steven Pesavento
Yet in this last year, we were buying properties for 30 to 50% off of what they are realistically valued today. And anybody who's waiting around trying to time the market is missing that because you don't actually know when was the best time to buy until after well into the future. And so it is a challenging place. And I know as a broker, you're in a position where now you have to counsel and talk with these borrowers and talk through and discuss educationally why it makes sense to buy if that's the decision that they want to do is to own a home or to make an investment.
00;13;06;21 - 00;13;33;07
Steven Pesavento
I know we're seeing that on our side, but I'm curious about is somebody who's got a team of 40 people. When you reduce revenue by 75%, it seems only prudent that you're going to have to cut your team in order to react to this new environment. How have you guys reacted internally as far as controlling expenses on the things you can control, knowing that you can't control the market?
00;13;33;09 - 00;13;52;15
Nicole Reuth
And we we have ten people on the team now. So we did drop and if I were honest with myself, I should have cut even further sooner. Yeah, based on. But there was always and I hate to build a business on hope. I will tell people all the time, you never build a business on hope. But I do know my strengths.
00;13;52;15 - 00;14;15;08
Nicole Reuth
I know my ability to be out in the market and educating and to sell. And I do have confidence that when the market turns around, I also want the base of a team that I know that can support that increase in volume. So you don't want to strip yourself all the way down to the numbers, but at the same time, you want to be realistic on what can you carry in the lean years.
00;14;15;11 - 00;14;44;06
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, it's a challenging place to be because, you know, for us it was a similar approach where we had cut way back during 2020 in COVID because there was a belief that there was going to be a crash and there would have been one had the Fed not put all this money into the system yet. Then we reacted to that, staffed up, started going forward and all the demand really got pulled out of the market.
00;14;44;06 - 00;15;14;01
Steven Pesavento
And so that ended up costing us a lot of money. And it's always, in retrospect that we wish we could have made a change operationally more quickly. But it's the ironic balance between, hey, how do we get ourselves in a position to handle all this demand if we believe it's going to be there yet, not over staffing. So I know obviously you operate a business mortgage brokers a mortgage brokerage is a business that's, you know, makes a lot of money in fee revenue when things are good.
00;15;14;03 - 00;15;34;25
Steven Pesavento
But I also know you've been an investor. So talk to us a little bit about what your perspective or approach has been to investing. Have you invested in in real estate? Have you invested in funds in syndications or are you invested in the public markets? How are you thinking about building that future beyond the income that you're earning actively in the business that you run?
00;15;34;27 - 00;16;04;07
Nicole Reuth
So we started investing in real estate about 14 years ago now and have 24 doors and two commercial buildings, and we did get the majority of those pre pandemic, which is wildly fortunate today, but absolutely was not planned on. Right. Nobody saw pandemic coming. But I also have three young adult children who are like 22, 23, 25 and those kids.
00;16;04;07 - 00;16;28;04
Nicole Reuth
So we've hyper focused on them during the pandemic. So the 25 year old, we helped him by his first home at age 21, just before the pandemic. My second kiddo bought his home, like right after the pandemic started, and then my third kiddo bought hers right a year later. So we helped them. We put 5% down. We cosigned with them, and we started building that out.
00;16;28;06 - 00;16;58;22
Nicole Reuth
And then I was able to purchase a home during the pandemic for my mother in Florida. And then we just helped. We closed two months ago on a home for our oldest, his second home. So we're still buying now. I've turned my attention not to say that I don't want to buy more properties for me, but at age 54, I'm looking at these opportunities to go, okay, we can buy these single family homes with rentable space in the basement so we can have multiple streams of income.
00;16;58;25 - 00;17;16;09
Nicole Reuth
The kids are still in their young twenties or my mom. Obviously I'd be either renting a place for her or owning it, so I'd rather own it in Florida. So I'm looking at what are the opportunities for them long term to help set them up, as will, you know, use up. My goal is that we'll use up all of our investments before we go.
00;17;16;09 - 00;17;37;19
Nicole Reuth
And if I have anything left, then fantastic, they'll get that. But I'm not going to hold back because in the meantime, we've been setting them up for success. And then I also turn my attention back to a small apartment building. So we're going to we've kicked off a fund where we're going to be raising the sorry, raising money to start buying small apartment buildings.
00;17;37;19 - 00;17;51;18
Nicole Reuth
I partner with some folks who have deep, deep skills in converting small apartment buildings and raising cap rates and marketing those. And then an attorney in protecting everyone and doing the fund the right way. So those are some things that through all of
00;17;51;18 - 00;17;57;06
Nicole Reuth
to turn our attention towards that. I have the base of the residential doors and the two commercial buildings.
00;17;57;06 - 00;18;01;21
Nicole Reuth
I've helped my kids and now we're looking at larger scale projects.
00;18;01;24 - 00;18;20;21
Steven Pesavento
Yeah. So you've you've bought these properties for yourself to create cash flow and you've supported your family from a from a target perspective, do those investments pay for the life that you want to live even without the mortgage brokerage?
00;18;20;23 - 00;18;46;08
Nicole Reuth
They don't yet. So all of them, we put them on a 30 year fixed, but all of them have a payoff of age 62. So I'm 54 today. So we put all of them based on the first one that we bought 14 years ago. It has the longest amortization. It's on a 30 year fixed. But I, I set my own schedule and we pay it down to at the age of 62, all of them will be 100% paid off.
00;18;46;10 - 00;19;03;24
Nicole Reuth
Now, I have the early ones are much further along obviously, but a lot of the rents go to the mortgages. So in that case, I don't live off of them now. I could put them all back to 30 year fixed in the sense of like drop the payments, take some cash flow. Absolutely I could, but I don't need to.
00;19;03;24 - 00;19;24;19
Nicole Reuth
The business, the mortgage business has been able to sustain, even though it hasn't been nearly as good as it had been in the past. It's done enough where we've just revisited our lifestyle, know that it's a short term dip in the market and then allowed the rental properties to continue to pay themselves down knowing we could dip into them if we needed to.
00;19;24;22 - 00;19;53;28
Steven Pesavento
So your strategy is really my goal is to own these properties free and clear and just be able to produce the massive amount of cash flow possible when it's the right time. What's gone into that thought process as far as the balance between creating a higher rate of return by having and keeping leverage on versus going the, you know, no debt type strategy?
00;19;54;00 - 00;20;14;17
Nicole Reuth
That's a fantastic question because I get into those conversations all the time. Do you keep skimming the equity to buy the next thing and the next thing? And do you create those multiples? And and I think ultimately for me, a measure of time was a big decision factor. I didn't buy my first investment until I was 40 years old.
00;20;14;20 - 00;20;36;25
Nicole Reuth
It was also a measure of what do I need right? So we had had an abundant life. I mean, the last 14 years have been really good to us in the mortgage industry. So my husband and I were able to create a very abundant lifestyle, but still coming from the backgrounds. I mean, he was raised by a secretary and an Air Force base maintenance man, and I was raised, as I discussed earlier.
00;20;36;25 - 00;20;58;24
Nicole Reuth
So our definition of abundance might not be the same definition of abundance to somebody else. But freedom is really what we want, is that ability to not worry about making the bills or to have a home that we love, which we do here in Denver that has some space around it. And it's a pleasure place to go home to, to know that we can kind of remove ourselves from the hustle and bustle.
00;20;58;26 - 00;21;18;17
Nicole Reuth
So that to us was abundance. So we created that. So for us, we sat down and created a series of goals. And so I did this with a lot of my clients now as a mortgage lender, when I'm helping newer investors and we talk about what is, you know, depending on what age you are, maybe you're 35, 40, maybe 25, you know, what is your thirties look like?
00;21;18;17 - 00;21;36;18
Nicole Reuth
What are your forties look like, what your fifties look like? If you had your your druthers to design whatever that look like to you, what would be important to you at those stages in your life? What kind of money do you need to be making? What kind of assets would you like to your name? And as Peter and I, my husband designed that for ourselves.
00;21;36;21 - 00;21;58;16
Nicole Reuth
We really figured out that we are just fine with our current income in the mortgage industry. And if we bought those properties that we did, the 24 doors and in two commercial buildings, age 62 would replace much of the income that we were earning as in the mortgage industry. And so by doing that, living on this now and then setting those up for then, then we could turn our attention to our kids.
00;21;58;16 - 00;22;09;23
Nicole Reuth
So I didn't need to keep scraping the equity to buy more because for me it's like, what is one more get me or one more get me. If it's already abundance, it's a mindset, I think.
00;22;09;25 - 00;22;31;10
Steven Pesavento
Well, I think that's really important because it just it all depends what's right for somebody. All depends on what it is that they want. I talk about this concept naming your number and understanding how much money do you actually need to earn every single month to be living the life you want to live. And for somebody that's 5000 a month, for someone else, it's 20,000.
00;22;31;10 - 00;23;06;13
Steven Pesavento
For another person, it's 50,000 a month. And there's many different ways to get there. And the benefit of going completely paid off that free is that you have a lot of options from that place. There's no real requirement that you have to do anything you could always put a loan on and pull some equity out. You could always gather and get paid on that cash flow, but you're in a place where you feel secure while for somebody else who maybe is going to be quite happy with the cash flow that's coming off of it, they'll keep a certain level of debt on the property because, you know that's going to help increase the return and
00;23;06;13 - 00;23;26;10
Steven Pesavento
they maybe need something different. And so I think it's really important, like you said, to understand what somebody is looking for. And there is a big benefit in being able to know, hey, I'm totally secure. I don't actually have to do anything. I don't have to worry about the market going up or down because I own this thing outright.
00;23;26;10 - 00;23;48;04
Steven Pesavento
I don't have to keep a bunch of extra cash on the sideline to pay that debt service should something go wrong somewhere in the portfolio. There's a piece of mind that comes off of it. There's a trade off. The return on equity is going to be a lot lower, but oftentimes that security for depending on your mindset, is going to make that worth it, right?
00;23;48;06 - 00;23;49;24
Nicole Reuth
Absolutely.
00;23;49;26 - 00;24;10;20
Steven Pesavento
So what you know, at this point, you've got these properties. It sounds like you've essentially said, hey, I'm good. I don't need to keep buying more. I'm just shooting for that age 62. And then that's the point where, you know, we can go and just continue living the good life.
00;24;10;23 - 00;24;33;21
Nicole Reuth
Yeah. And and I do I love my job. I do a lot of educating. I do I teach a lot of classes. We put out a ton of content. I think that this knowledge knowledge is power. And I think the knowledge behind building wealth through real estate is game changing, life changing. So we put out a lot of free content that helps support others to kind of get to this knowledge.
00;24;33;21 - 00;24;53;11
Nicole Reuth
And, and obviously I'd love to be that person's mortgage broker. But ultimately, I just I do believe deeply I have a very deep spiritual faith and I do believe deeply in sharing it and paying it forward. So we just, you know, give that out. And so we are looking at doing the fund. I am looking at building more assets.
00;24;53;11 - 00;25;18;19
Nicole Reuth
I do want to get into the apartment buildings and into larger multifamily opportunities. So I'm not done per se, but I will say that I did turn my attention during the COVID years and the pandemic years when the interest rates were going up, when home prices were continuing to go up. I looked at my kids as an opportunity to say they are so worried about the today and they don't need to pay it off in ten years or even 20.
00;25;18;26 - 00;26;01;05
Nicole Reuth
They can hold this asset and let it build for them. So if I were still is family building our family wealth, I just wanted to put it into their name because structurally it made more sense to me at the time. And so now as we got past 2023, which as we were discussing, was an interesting, really stressful year for real estate, now that we're getting into where 2024 takes us and then start to rebuild based on this normal 2025 and beyond, what different investments will we be turning our attention to that might continue to create that wealth into our later years, But in full honesty with myself, like I if nothing else was bought, we
00;26;01;05 - 00;26;04;14
Nicole Reuth
would be okay. I just don't sit still. Well.
00;26;04;16 - 00;26;32;28
Steven Pesavento
No, I get it completely. I think what's really cool about the example that you're sharing for other people is, you know, you've bought these 24 units, 24 different single family homes, two commercial buildings. What's really cool about that and the fact that you're paying these down is that you'll have the optionality at some point in the future to say, hey, I'm going to hold on to these properties and I'm just going to keep collecting on them.
00;26;33;00 - 00;26;37;06
Steven Pesavento
Or as you start to understand more about the leverage that can
00;26;37;06 - 00;26;58;23
Nicole Reuth
YouTube channel and it's under the roof team. Or if you Google Nicole Ruth and my last name is a little wonky, it's are you. But we have a very strong YouTube channel that we put out two videos a week. And then if you're a real estate agent, really anywhere in the country, I'm licensed in 37 states and I have access to the rest of the states as well.
00;26;58;26 - 00;27;17;22
Nicole Reuth
We work with a lot of real estate agents across the country, and we also have for them a Friday text that talks about where the interest rates in the market's going and then a Saturday blog and all of my content, although I'm a mortgage lender and I work with a lot of real estate agents, it's all centered around building wealth through real estate.
00;27;17;22 - 00;27;37;04
Nicole Reuth
It's how do you conceptualize this thing that I market in, right? But how do you which I know is what you do as well. But so even a lot of investors will sign up and definitely log into our YouTube channel because it's a mindset. So I often talk about, here's two strategies, I'll give you strategy on strategy and strategy.
00;27;37;09 - 00;27;59;22
Nicole Reuth
And one of those strategies is going to light up a fire in you and you're going to go, That's the way for me, and you're just going to take off running. And that's the thing that lights me up every day is can I open up more doors and give people more access and ideas to create multi-generational wealth? I mean, that's forget about my little life and my little wealth.
00;27;59;22 - 00;28;02;05
Nicole Reuth
It's it goes so much bigger than that.
00;28;02;08 - 00;28;22;29
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, I love that. I think that's really cool and it's important. I found for myself that after I made a certain amount of money or had a certain amount of success, I realized that it actually wasn't going to solve the the real problems, you know, and that you get so much more by giving back and by being able to sharing sharing those lessons.
00;28;22;29 - 00;28;44;06
Steven Pesavento
And it doesn't mean you're not going to still make money. It doesn't mean that money isn't a valuable resource. But, you know, being able to give and make an impact is even more is even more powerful. So the last question before we wrap up is really around. A lot of the people who are listening are in a position where they've maybe started making some investments.
00;28;44;08 - 00;28;57;22
Steven Pesavento
Maybe they know what they should be doing, but for some reason they're not taking action. They're not doing that. What advice do you have to them towards making a move and getting in the game and starting to go down that path?
00;28;57;25 - 00;29;24;27
Nicole Reuth
So my husband always says progressive improvement is better than delayed perfection and it took me a long time to actually agree with it, but it's the small step in the direction. I'd say the first thing that you need to do is get clear clarity in your goals and what you're trying to achieve will open up options for you in pathways that you don't see until you know where it is you're headed.
00;29;24;27 - 00;29;53;12
Nicole Reuth
It just feels crowded and stressful and like sometimes it's almost too many options. So if you're feeling like you can't make a decision, it's because you don't have clarity about where you want to go. So having that goal setting section sitting down with your significant other, I often joke with my clients. I go, You know what? When you're having a goal session and you're talking about what you want to achieve in each one of your decades, if you drink a bottle of wine before you sit down to do that, it goes a lot better.
00;29;53;12 - 00;30;15;12
Nicole Reuth
So often it's drink that bottle of wine, get fun, design what that looks like, and then you just start backing into what are the activities that I need to do. And even one activity is better than no activity. It doesn't have to be leaps. Don't try to leap because if you try, you'll be afraid of failure. You'll be afraid it's going to be too much or too little.
00;30;15;12 - 00;30;33;14
Nicole Reuth
And instead, if you just take a small step, those small steps add up so much faster. In fact, there is a quote I'd heard that success is measured in inches, not in miles to start doing it that way. And the success just comes. So I just take a baby step, the one baby step.
00;30;33;17 - 00;30;44;12
Steven Pesavento
Nicole, so great having you on. Great catching up on all these great topics. And for all the listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode. Look forward to seeing you on the next one.
00;30;44;14 - 00;30;45;23
Nicole Reuth
Sounds good. Bye bye.