Meet Heidi Lydon | Wife | Mom | Financial Advisor | Boutique Owner | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Heidi Lydon and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Heidi, how do you think about risk?
Being a wife and mom, I don’t often struggle with risk day to day. But I do struggle with the unknown and the uncertainty that raising a family can bring. The negative thoughts of things that could potentially happen to my husband or my children often catches me off guard and can really drain me if I dwell on those things. I think I find myself worrying about these things because my sister had two brain surgeries when she was 15 years old. I think every family goes through hardships at times, and although her surgeries were our struggle at that time, I’m thankful it was only that. We could have gone through so much worse. I don’t like to dwell on the unknown, but I’d say raising a family with someone you love is probably one of the best and most rewarding risks anyone could ever take.

Being a financial advisor, risk taking is part of my everyday agenda. You have to have faith in the future and confidence to be able to invest people’s life savings and to accommodate to each person’s comfort level and lifestyle. Risk has to be calculated in this profession and it is something that I don’t take lightly. I embrace the risk when wearing my financial advisor hat.

Being a boutique owner, I’m thankful I get to share the normal business struggles with my partner, who also happens to be my sister. I find myself learning new challenges that come with owning a clothing/retail store and new ways to improve how we are managing risk. The biggest risk we take is purchasing products that potentially won’t sell or take a while to sell and that is something that can be a challenging for many in this industry. Our boutique will be one year old in August and it has provided us with many learning experiences that we have big plans to improve as the years go on.

As an artist, I try to not ever let risk enter my mind space. Art is my risk release. Any worry or fear gets exhausted from me when I paint, draw or design. Art gives my mind rest from any risk that I’ve ever taken and provides me with new ideas to manage the risks I continue to take each day.

I think risk, if calculated and thought through, can have a very positive impact on one’s life. Every time I have been presented an opportunity that involves risk, there is always immense reward to follow. Risk can look like a lot of things to different people, but for me, risk involves not knowing what could be. My Dad always says “If you aren’t livin’ on the edge, then you’re taking up too much space.” You just have to have faith and know that the edge is where good things come from as long as you are willing to work hard and stay positive. Good things come from outside of our comfort zones and I personally work harder knowing that I have some skin in the game. It makes the journey that much more rewarding.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I wrote a very long biography for my website that I ended up not using. I will paste that below. I think that sums up where I came from and how this all got started. I have a lot of moving parts in my life and I definitely think that sets me apart from others.

Biography

Hey there! My name is Heidi Lydon and I am the chaos behind the brush(es). My interest in art came at a young age. Ever since I can remember I have always had my talent and love for art in my back pocket. I say that art was “in my back pocket” because although I loved art, I also had a love for numbers and problem solving and these two talents tended to compete with one another my whole life. It wasn’t until my teen years that I learned how to use both of my talents to compliment one another. I was around 14 years old when I would sell my arts and crafts at craft shows and vendor fairs or would sell them to close friends and family (this of course was before social media was a thing). Turning my talent into a business was the thing I needed to complete my whole picture.

I eventually went onto college at Western Technical College in LaCrosse, WI and double majored in Business Management and Graphic Design (again the struggle continued to pick which one I wanted). While in college I got a job as a work-study in the marketing department for Western Technical College. It didn’t pay the best, but I got to design a TON of fliers, marketing pieces and even some billboards for the campus. I had awesome mentors and I learned so much from the designers in that department. I enjoyed my time working there so much that I even tried to get a full time job for the campus. They wouldn’t hire me unless I had a bachelor’s degree, so I quit working there altogether and got a job at my local print shop in Sparta. At the time it was called Evan’s Printing, but you may know them now as Evans Print & Media Group. Not only was I getting way more design projects to do there, but I also got to interact with clients and handle some billing too. This really made me excited to work with numbers again and be in a business setting. My boss, Greg Evans, had a lot of faith in me to complete my tasks, that he even let me design the first edition of the Go Monroe County Magazine, one of the many pieces I am proud to have been part of yet today.

Now, remind you, I was in college, double majoring while doing all of this and we hadn’t yet gotten to the part in class to learn how to do these things. I was still in the “gen ed” portion of my learning. Everything I was taught while working is what got me through these tasks at work. In my personal life, this was also around the time my boyfriend (now husband) and I were buying our first house together. Describing this house as a fixer upper would be complimenting what we bought, but I loved it! Mostly because it was the only thing we could afford to love, but I could see the potential. We bought this foreclosure, vacant property that sat empty for two years, that was listed for $82,000 with the banks, for $42,000. Yep, that’s how fancy this place was. I should backtrack a little to tell you about my upbringing so you get the whole picture and see why I thought this was a feasible idea for us.

Since 1994, my parents have started and operated a total of six different small businesses over the years. These businesses are, RBI Construction, RBI Fabrication & Machining, RBI Rentals, RBI Ag Division, RBI Care and RBI Caring Hearts. I was born in 1995, so my whole life was revolved around my parents being self employed. I got a front row seat at what running a business (several for that matter) looks like from my parents. And when my sisters and I got old enough we would help Dad at work on the construction sites, cleaning the rental properties for our mom, running parts in the tool shop with Dad, and now some of my sisters still work for my parents at their residential facilities too. I also got to help my mom update the business Quickbooks and reconcile their checkbooks at the prime age of 10 (I might have been a little younger, I can’t remember). Being a business owner and making my own living was in my blood. I inherited my business mind from my parents and they were also both very creative individuals in their own way, so I guess they can take the credit for my creative abilities too.

Knowing the little bits I picked up from the construction sites and rental properties, buying a crappy house to fix up, didn’t scare me. Paying for a house when I was in college and had other bills, didn’t scare me. The thought of figuring out how to accomplish all of my tasks and still be a sane person, that scared me. I am and have always been a “eat the whole elephant” type of person, so attempting all of these tasks gave me anxiety, because I wanted to get everything done NOW. Life doesn’t work that way and buying that house and doing these things really helped me put that into perspective. My boyfriend also came from a family of business owners and at the time he was working for his family business: Lydon Drywall & Electric as an electrician. With his background and mine, we were the ultimate duo. We learned a lot while fixing that house up, not only new construction techniques but also a lot about each other and our relationship. It wasn’t all sun shine and rainbows. There was a lot of stress, blood (literally), tears and anger that came with putting that house back together and at times it was taxing on our relationship too. But we both loved each other and continued to try to make the best of the situation.
Eventually my boyfriend came to work for my dad’s construction company and I became a realtor for the broker who helped us buy our first house. It’s a funny story actually, one of my many God moments. I was still working at Evan’s Printing and going into my second year of college when Beth Pendleton emailed Evans Printing needing some marketing materials created for her realtor company, Assist 2 Sell. I had just gotten to work and I knew that my time in college was coming to a close but I still hadn’t figured out my “forever career”. I remember driving to work that day from school thinking ‘man, it would just be nice if someone would come to me and say “Take over my business”’. Well, when Beth and I started corresponding back and forth about her marketing materials, she realize who I was and remembered that her agent helped me buy a house at a young age. She asked me to go to lunch with her to discuss a few things and so I went. I believe it was later that week or the next we met up and she asked me to be a realtor under her and then the plan would be overtime I could eventually take over her business. I was floored, here I had just asked a week ago for this very thing and now it was happening. I of course said yes, and went on to get my realtor license while finishing school, while working (because I couldn’t sell houses until I had my license) and while renovating a fixer upper, that we lived in. I should also mention that I continued to paint and draw and paint murals on walls to help pay for our house and school through all of these events. Art was always my easiest and fastest way to get me through our tough financial times. It was a bonus for me because I loved to do it. It didn’t even feel like work.

I eventually became licensed, sold tons of real estate in the area and finished school with my associates degree in business management. Life was good! Beth even let me paint in the back area of the realtor office in between showings too. I loved my job, loved working with my clients and loved that my construction background came full circle to this time of my life too. I felt like we were finally getting ahead and getting some traction with our finances and the house renovation now that I could work more being out of school. Then, Beth came to me and said that she was going to have to find a new office space because where we were at currently was going to go up in rent. I told her I would buy a building and she could rent from me until she decided to retire (or at least scale back her workload) and then I could take over her business. We both agreed and the hunt was on for me to buy a building. Now, if you know anything about buying real estate, you know that most people (especially 20 year olds) need financing and bank approvals to write offers. I knew this but I didn’t do that or have that, I just went on the hunt for a property that would fit into my own budget spreadsheets. I figured if it was meant to be I would be able to figure out the financing later. I eventually found a place right on Wisconsin Street in Sparta. It had decent bones, needed updates, but overall it was in a prime location and had the space we needed. I put in an offer on the property and a week later, they accepted. Now, I was a little scared. Holy crap! I just agreed to buy a property with a binding contract and I had no clue if we could even get financing. I extended the purchase date out to April of 2016 (I think I wrote the offer back in Nov of 2015) oh and the best part was I didn’t really tell anyone I had put in an offer on this, not even my boyfriend.

Closing date came and I told Brandon (boyfriend) that I needed him to meet me at the bank to sign some papers. He asked why and I told him my genius plan. For some reason he wasn’t as freaked out as I thought he would be and he said he trusted my ability to make this plan all work out and agreed to co-sign on the new office building. It was the easiest real estate transaction of my life. I was meant to have that building.

Time went on, I continued to sell houses, Brandon was learning more and more about construction while working for my parents’ company, and life was exactly what I thought it would be. The rent I was getting from my new building was practically paying for the mortgage and we were really checking all the to dos off the renovation list we had for our home. Although I hated college, I even went back to school online to finish my bachelors degree so that I could eventually become an appraiser too. Then one day, right in the middle of our first kitchen, I was finishing a paper for school before running to a showing with a new client. Brandon came into the kitchen and wanted me to turn around. I told him to hold on, I needed to finish what I was typing first. He kept bugging me to turn around, turn around. So, I finally did (in pure annoyance by the way). There kneeled my handsome boyfriend, shaking with a ring box and a beautiful diamond ring set. And he said “will you marry me?!” The first words that came out of my mouth were “Oh my God where did you get that ring?!” I said that because I handled ALL of our money, I mean ALL of it, together. We didn’t have yours, mine and our money, we just had OUR money. So I was in shock that he managed to surprise me with a proposal. I did say “yes” though and then I had to hurry to go to my showing. Later that week I had to write a check out to my mom for my new bling that was sitting on my finger too. It was so worth it.

Now, planning a wedding and eventually wanting a family and work life balance (whatever that means), I realized that I was self employed and had never started planning for our future financially. I decided that we needed to get retirement plans started and maybe dabble in investing to help make our money last longer. I eventually, through a long process, met Denise Halverson at Edward Jones. She helped me open Roth IRA’s for Brandon and I to start saving for retirement. We didn’t have much, maybe $500 each to get those going but she was willing to help us get started. She then asked me if I was interested in becoming a financial advisor myself and possibly take over some of her book of business. At the time I was making really good money in real estate and already had my plan to take over Beth’s franchise. So I declined and didn’t think another thought of it. A year later at my annual review Denise asked me again if I was interested in becoming a financial advisor. This was almost like God was presenting me the opportunity this time. Why would she ask me two times like this? Because I have a hard time saying no the opportunities I entertained the thought and agreed to go to dinner with her and another recruiting advisor in the area and our spouses. Brandon and I were close to getting married at the time and we both really wanted a family right away. The things that I learned about Edward Jones at that dinner sounded too good to be true. But it was a chance I was willing to take even though I knew nothing about being a financial advisor or investing besides what I had done with Denise for our own retirement. I sadly told Beth that I was going to be changing career avenues and eventually she moved out of my office building into her own office building that she purchased. After a few months I was able to find a tenant to rent to my office space while I was getting my series 7, series 66, and insurance licenses. I will not lie, getting my series 7 and series 66 licenses were the hardest things I’ve ever had to do academically. I cried every day during those trainings and I failed my first two times at taking my series 7 license exam. You can only take the exam three times in your life and on the third time I finally passed. Then it was time to tackle the series 66 license exam. I failed my first time taking that exam too, but finally got it on the second try. The insurance exams weren’t as hard for me and I was able to pass those right away. But thinking about those exams now still brings an overwhelming anxiety to me. While getting my licenses I also finished my bachelor‘s degree online and was now able to work as a full-time financial advisor out of Denise Halverson‘s office in Sparta. I also got married in the mix of all that training and a few short months after our wedding my husband and I found out we were pregnant with our first baby. It was tough getting my business started and we were still finishing our fixer-upper renovation. We eventually bought one of my parents duplexes that they had rented out and moved into one side of the duplex while renting the other side out. In 2018, after our son, John Paul was born we sold our fixer-upper home to our next-door neighbor’s daughter and her family. I was so happy to see that home go to a loving family that would take good care of it. I eventually built up my business at Edward Jones enough to get my own office and moved into my little office building on Wisconsin Street after many months of Brandon renovating it. That not only was a full circle moment for me but we were also able to pay our bills again as Edward Jones was paying me rent to have me in there.
Having my own office and working on my own after having a child brought a lot of stress that needed to be relieved in someway. Most people look to their hobbies or exercise to relieve stress, and this is when I started looking to art again. There was something freeing about watching the paint move between the canvas and my brush and letting my ideas flow onto paper.

I started painting and selling art again, but this time I did it because I wanted to, not because I needed to pay the bills. It became a pretty regular side hustle for me and in 2020 during COVID which was not only stressful for everyone but also a stressful time for my career, We also brought our second son, Brent into the world. The whole world being put on hold during COVID really gave me perspective on what I wanted in life. I knew I wanted to paint and I also knew that I wanted to help people and work with numbers in someway. It wasn’t until 2021 that I realized that I could do both and not feel like I have to pick one or the other. I have no plans to change my career as I love my job as a financial advisor, I have no plans to stop being involved in business adventures such as Schmitz Fits and I have no plans to stop painting or to put that on hold. Please know that if or when you purchase a piece of art from me, know that I am forever grateful that you appreciate my work and know that it came from a PEACE☮️ of my chaotic life. I appreciate your understanding and patience as I complete each piece while being a wife, mom, and career woman. I hope you enjoy my pieces as much as I enjoy creating them.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
In my city, Sparta, Wisconsin, we have very simple pleasures to look forward to. The first thing I’d do is take her for a drive to the rural parts of the town and view the scenery and wildlife. After that, I’d give her a tour of the different buildings, offices and farms that my family owns and operates. I’d end the day with a home cooked meal either in the comfort of my home or my parents farm. We would spend a lot of time going through the many small businesses down town and on the ridge. Depending on the season we might even go snowmobiling or on an ATV ride. Our city is known for being the bicycle capital of America, so it would only be fitting to spend a day bike riding on the trails. I’d want her to meet my family and my husband’s family and introduce her to some of my favorite business owners in the area. We would spend a lot of time with my husband and kids and my siblings and nieces/nephew. We have a very small circle but it’s never lacking support. I’d want her stay to feel peaceful and for her to catch a glimpse of my life in that time.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I want to dedicate my shoutout to my husband, my kids and my family. Without them I wouldn’t have a reason to do what I do and certainly wouldn’t have the support to continue to do what do each day.

Website: www.heidilydon.com | www.schmitzfits.com

Instagram: @hlsdesign.heidi.lydon | @schmitzfitsllc

Linkedin: Heidi Lydon

Facebook: @hlsdesign | @SchmitzFits | @ Edward Jones-Financial Advisor: Heidi Lydon

Image Credits
My family photos were taken by Ashley Iverson Photography