There are many paths toward financial independence. But which can take you to it faster? Nicole Rueth, the Producing Branch Manager of The Rueth Team, believes it is in using home equity. In this episode, she joins Bob Roark and Jaime Zawmon of Titan CEO to tell us why that is so and how she helps people get to them and capitalize on their biggest asset and liability. Featured as one of the 2020 Titan 100, Nicole then shares what characteristics make a Titan of Industry and how you can build a company with the best version of yourself—from habits and rituals to mindset. Join today’s conversation as Nicole takes you into her journey of leaving a legacy and helping people.

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Leaving A Legacy Through Home Equity With Nicole Rueth, Producing Branch Manager, The Rueth Team, Fairway Mortgage, And Co-Host Jaime Zawmon, President of Titan CEO

We have our co-host Jaime Zawmon. She is the Founder and President of Titan CEO. Our guest is Nicole Rueth. She is the Producing Branch Manager of The Rueth Team at Fairway Mortgage. Thank you for taking the time.

I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for having me.

Nicole, if you would tell us about your business and who you serve?

As a lender, I serve people who own homes and want to refinance or buy homes but that's 1/100 of what we do. What my team does and what differentiates us in the market is the fact that we come alongside our clients to evaluate what is the swiftest way to get them towards independence financially using home equity. How do they capitalize on appreciation, principal reduction and rental income? How do they capitalize on what is the biggest asset and liability for most people? We solve the problem of how to finance that first purchase, that move up purchase and that investment property that's going to help take care of your family.

When you first started on this path, was that your service offering?

I first started as most lenders do dropping off candy at real estate offices, trying to connect with a divorce attorney, and trying to figure out who the financial planner that I was going to get referrals from. I operated it small and I was thinking about how do I get the next deal in my pipeline? It was a couple of years later when I started down this path of creating a team. I come from Corporate America so I manage large scale projects. This is back in the day of Andersen Consulting, now they're Accenture. I knew how to develop teams, strategies or solutions. I had no idea how to track that in mortgage lending.

When I got out of the corporate business to have three amazing kids who are now young adults and then got back into a job, which that's all I thought it was. It happened to be in lending but I was trying to originate a loan. I started figuring out that I could originate more loans if I had people beside me that believed the same thing and then I got my first investment property. I had somebody come alongside me that cared enough to spend the time to teach me about what that meant because I didn't know, even though I was in the business.

I started teaching other people. I had to pay it forward because I was generously given and I had to give it all away. As I'm giving it away, people want some of that and they're like, “I don't know how to build wealth.” Not real wealth where you invest in the stock market and right now that might be going well but next year it might not be. “How do you create that stability in that foundation?” It was that incremental change that somehow you don't even see coming until it's starting to build on itself and then it does. You realize that you want to start to build something that you're proud of, you can leave a legacy and you're impacting other lives. That's the cool part. I started focusing on building a team and that's what I have. I have fifteen amazing people that work with me, like me, for me and for the clients.

[bctt tweet="A Titan can't be afraid to fail. A Titan has the need to build." username=""]

Was there a catalyst that took you from, “I want to be able to do another loan,” to this vision that you started pursuing?

There was. The catalyst was a gentle older man. Back then before Meetups and before you use Facebook for this, you had an investment breakfast club, where you went to a hotel and into one of their conference rooms. It was one of those where I met this gentleman where I was going to pick up realtors. I was going to build my business to generate another loan. He was going to find people as clients and we happen to bump into each other. I think he won. I ended up buying a fourplex from him. My first ever investment where I jumped all the way in. I still own that fourplex. I bought it for $400,000 in Arvada. It's worth almost $1 million. It was a phenomenal opportunity that I would never have even thought of had he not walked beside me. For the months, it took me to buy that thing because I wanted to say no. I did say no a lot of times but he taught, he leaned in and helped me through the whole thing.

You've been incredibly open to the possibilities and things that present themselves to you in your life. For those of you that are reading who are already captivated by your story, Nicole is one of the 2020 Titan 100 recognized here in the Colorado Metropolitan Area. I'm holding up a copy of the Titan 100 book in which she was recognized. As an intro to how we get started with this show, I always love to ask all of the Titans that we interview in the series, what characteristics that they believe it takes to be considered a Titan of Industry? I'd love to get your take on it.

A Titan can't be afraid to fail. A Titan has the need to build. I don't want to build because I get paid money to do it. I build because I have to provide an experience for my team and my clients. I have to continue to build that next thing and continue to grow the services that we offer to our clients and our referral partners. A Titan doesn't believe in sitting still and wants to leave the place a better place than they found it.

There was the before and after. Before the lending business, what you did and understand the family transition and then going out, back into the workforce. If you would walk us down the path of what you were doing before you got into the Fairway Mortgage world. What did you do in Corporate America? There was that point where you decided to leave Corporate America and there was that transition when you went to Fairway.

At first, I started in technology. I was programming. I went into change management helping those executive sponsorship level and the workforce level in identifying and capitalizing on the change of technology on how do you implement it from a workforce perspective and efficiencies. I did that and it took me traveling and working a lot. Eventually, I had my first baby, my second and I was pregnant with our third. We decided we couldn't work like that anymore and so I hung out with the kids for a while until I called up a friend of mine. I said, “I need a job. I don't want a career because I don't want to work that much. I need to get off the floor and have adult interaction.”

He happened to be in mortgage lending and that's when I entered into the broker world. This is thirteen years before Fairway. I landed in the mortgage world looking for a job, not realizing that wherever I went, there I was. I worked that hard. I don't care what my job was. I just did. I ended up working all those hours anyway but for now, it was building something. I started in operations and mortgage lending because that was my vein. I did that for 8 to 9 years. I went over to originating in the sales side with the same passion that I had for building the business. I love that part too. I started building financial futures for my clients. The transition was a little wonky in the sense that there's a lot of backstory to that one but once I leaped over, I never looked back. At that point, it was always working with the clients.

It sounds that success is in your DNA and it's a matter of where you point yourself in the direction of where you want to go and you continue to find a way to be successful in that discipline, which is nice. I know that many women can relate to your experience with the grind and then what happens when children enter into the picture and how do you balance both. It's incredibly difficult for many women. It's great that you were able to take the time to be with them and grow with them and then say, “I'm ready to go back and start dominating again,” which is essentially what you did and it was awesome. I have to ask you, if you could go back twenty years plus of experience that you've had and offer the less experience version of yourself, some advice about building a company or to shape or define the experience that you would love to have many years ago, what would that be? What would that look like?

[caption id="attachment_5678" align="aligncenter" width="600"]<img src="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/NicoleBLPCaption1.jpg" alt="BLP Nicole | Leaving A Legacy"