July 3, 2024 • 47 mins
She went to the Olympic Trials for swimming when she was 16. She became a pro triathlete after she graduated from Yale. She met her husband (also a pro triathlete) when he sat next to her on a plane. She designed the first running skirt and created a business that empowered women to feel amazing in their skin. She also became a mom.
Nicole DeBoom is always smiling, which may lead one to believe she’s only encountered positives in her life. Not quite. Along with all the highs have come some lows, like waiting tables and putting on a mascot costume with a degree from Yale. She was also a black out drinker (sober now) and found herself fighting like crazy for space in the apparel world once the big brands realized (and copied) what she was doing with Skirt Sports.
Today, Nicole, Tim and their daughter Wilder live in Steamboat after uprooting from Boulder four years ago. She had sold her business and went to find her purpose. She may have just done that by coming full circle with a big announcement in the podcast.
Nicole DeBoom is always smiling, which may lead one to believe she’s only encountered positives in her life. Not quite. Along with all the highs have come some lows, like waiting tables and putting on a mascot costume with a degree from Yale. She was also a black out drinker (sober now) and found herself fighting like crazy for space in the apparel world once the big brands realized (and copied) what she was doing with Skirt Sports.
Today, Nicole, Tim and their daughter Wilder live in Steamboat after uprooting from Boulder four years ago. She had sold her business and went to find her purpose. She may have just done that by coming full circle with a big announcement in the podcast.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
While I was still racing as apro triathlete. I had this idea that
came to me during a training run, kind of jogging down Main Street and
I have these big picture windows.At the time, they had the Lion
soda fountain and this huge window,and I saw my reflection as I was
running by, and I had onall men's training clothing. It didn't fit
(00:21):
my body. I did not lookcute. Everything was all black, and
I just remember seeing myself going,oh my god, number one, I
look like a boy. I don'tfeel like myself. I don't feel good.
I am not motivated right now,and I just want to feel pretty.
I turned around, ran home,wrote the word pretty on a piece
(00:41):
of paper, and I said,I want to create a line of women's
clothing that you look, feel goodand can perform well. In Welcome to
Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired, a podcast featuring conversations with professional athletes
and coaches who have sat down totell their stories of setbacks and how they
were able to move forward. I'myour host, Susie Wargen. This episode's
(01:03):
a little different for a few reasons. For starters, it's a female professional
athlete and her sport is triathlon,not typically one we think about all the
time. I met Nicole de Boomwhen she was just starting her business called
Skirt Sports. She lived in Boulderand had created a product that no one
had seen before. These days,you see fun workout clothing for women all
(01:23):
over the place, But back then, Nicole's company was original. Before she
became a business owner, she wasa professional triathlete and so was her husband
Tim. The da Booms were quitethe power couple in Boulder, both as
athletes and Nicole with her business.Then she became a mom, and fifteen
years after creating her dream business,Nicole sold it and the da Booms moved
(01:44):
to Steamboat. She got off socialmedia and dove into figuring out life.
Four years later, she's come fullcircle, which you'll hear about in our
conversation. She's had her ups anddowns as an athlete, a business owner,
and personally. Fifteen years ago,realized drinking was about to tear her
marriage apart, so she stopped andhas been sober ever since. Ladies and
(02:06):
gentlemen, My good friend Nicole toBoom got traded, Fired, Were Retired?
Podcast with Susie Wargin, Hey,Nicole to Boom How are you hi,
Susie Origin, How are you welcome? Welcome to my town, I
know, welcome to Steamboat. Yeah, I'm hanging out in Steamboat today and
I took a flyer and said,hey, are you available now that you're
(02:28):
up here? And do you wantto be the third female on my podcast?
Which is really cool? And yeah, I'm super honored. You're a
traditional athlete from what I typically have, So this is cool. I know,
don't don't tune out yet. It'sstill going to be really fun.
There's gonna be a lot of goodstuff. Yeah, and we know each
other, so there might be someoversharing exactly, I know, exactly,
(02:50):
So this is great. You livein Steamboat now, but you spent a
lot of time in Boulder. That'swhen I got to know you, when
you were the head of Skirt Sports. But you have a super cool background
as a professional triathlete and swimmer,and we're going to kind of go through
all of that. So let's goback to the beginning, shall we.
Yes, I know you grew upin Chicago. Is that where you were
born? Yeah, born in Chicagoand raised in the suburbs a town called
(03:14):
Downers Grove, Illinois. At thetime, it was an unincorporated town kind
of near Naperville. A lot ofpeople know Naperville and oak Brook. So
yeah, I was your typical justcrazy outdoor kid running around doing all the
stuff. And you were a swimmerfor sure, I know that. What
else did you do and how didyou get into swimming? Well? I
did everything, okay, So basicallyI had an older sister two years older,
(03:37):
and my parents were just like,just do it all, and they
like threw me in all her sports. Yeah, totally now that I'm a
parent, if I had two kids, I would do that too. Yeah,
I only have the one, Soyeah, I tried everything. I
remember, you know, soccer,gymnastics. I mean, they threw you
in it all, and it wasall the like bigger sports, most of
the sports you usually cover. Itwasn't the individual endurance type sports have mountain
(04:00):
biking out there, skiing or anythinglike that that I do now in my
fifties, right, But the sportthat I really excelled in right from the
beginning was swimming, even at sixyears old. And in fact, I
remember my parents put me in swimlessons when I was like four or five.
And you started on one corner ofthe pool, like the beginners were
there and that's usually where you spentthe six weeks or whatever doing lessons.
(04:25):
On the very first day, Iwent from that corner to the next group,
to the next group, the nextgroup, the next group, and
I ended up in the highest groupdoing backstroke outside of the pool on the
first day and they were like,Okay, she knows how to swim.
This girl might have something. Wow. And then it just kind of and
you loved it, I assume,and it grew from there or did you
love it? I mean, that'sthe thing when you're a kid at that
(04:46):
age, you don't know what youlove yet. I don't think. But
I swam. I was put inswim team year round, swim team from
six years old, and I didall the other sports in school in junior
high and all of that, butswimming was a constant and I came to
love it. It just became asecond home, a place I felt extremely
natural. Interesting. Yeah, it'smy worst of the three as far as
(05:09):
triathlon goes. And I just can'tget that. I don't mind it,
but I can't get that I loveit. But probably because I'm not very
good at it. Well, Idon't love it anymore. I mean I
don't. I barely swim anymore,but you know, and I don't miss
five am workouts and diving into abrutal cold pool and staring at the black
line and all that. But atthe time, you know, what I
(05:30):
came to really love about swimming werethe things all kids say my friends.
You know, you got to knowthe other kids. You think you're just
staring at a black, black line. I know, and you are when
you're actually swimming, but you alsotouch the wall and you stop, and
you hang out with friends, andthere's boys and everybody's wearing swim suits.
It's true. And then you're inhigh school and there's hormones and there's this
(05:51):
whole other piece of swimming that like, it's just part of it, right.
Funny. It's like coming of agein a swimming pool is a thing.
So funny. So when did yougraduate from high school? Nineteen ninety
and ninety so you qualified for theOlympic trials in nineteen eighty eight, then
you're just a sophomore in high school. Holy cow, Oh my gosh,
that had to be crazy. Itwas a whirlwind. Actually, I was
(06:14):
a breaststroker. I swam one hundredbreaststroke at that age and stage, and
I was good. So my parentsbrought me over to like the club team
in our area in Westmont Swim Clubactually, and my coach was named Dave
Crodiac. We used to call himcote Rack. I don't know why.
He's an awesome guy. And thefirst meat I ever did where I did
pretty well, he still didn't reallyknow my name. I could tell the
(06:39):
next meet I qualified for nationals andhe was like, WHOA. The next
meet I went to Nationals and Iwas second place at Junior Nationals and made
Olympic Trials by like two seconds,and he was like, everyone's gonna hear
your name now. It just wentso fast, no kidding. It was
one of those like I didn't evenhave time to think about it. I
(07:00):
was just doing. And my naturalability in the pool was just so obvious.
And you know earlier I mentioned thewater in the pool was like a
home. I wish that for everyonethat they can find something in their lives
that you walk into it and youjust know what to do. I can
walk into any pool deck and belike, where's the kickboards? What lane
(07:23):
should I go in, Hey,can we circle swim? You know,
it's like walking into your kitchen.You just kind of know where everything is
and you can just go in thesmell of chlorine and that heat and all
that, you know. I mean, there's very much nostalgia to that.
Wow. And so did you goto the Olympic Trials? I did.
I sam Olympic Trials in nineteen eightyeight. That was when Janet evansh with
(07:43):
her Windmilly arms. She was likeon fire. And this guy named Matt
Beyondy and I remember being in thewarm up pool after he broke like a
national or world record and you know, fifty free and watching him from the
side of this little kid, youknow. And Olympic t were nothing.
They were There was no magic tothe Olympic Trials. There were I think
(08:03):
eighty four people in my event.I was forty second. Okay, I
smack dab in the middle. Buthey, you were there. I was
there sixteen years old, and itwas at that moment when I quit every
other sport and focused one hundred percenton swimming. And then did that take
you to Yale? Or how didyou decide on Yale? And did you
(08:24):
swim at Yale. A lot ofgood questions in that. Basically, here's
the crazy thing. I never gotfaster when I quit every other sport and
just focused on swimming. Really,I was still amazing swimmer and recruited to
colleges all over the country, andI did choose Yale, even though they
don't offer athletic scholarships. My parentsthey were like, really, you could
(08:48):
go to Michigan or UCLA and it'sall paid for. I guess what.
I wanted to go there, andI did swim there. I swam three
of the four years. I hada year off for partying just put I'm
just being honest, absolutely, andthat did not pay off. And I
came back my senior year and swamagain, and I just learned a lot
(09:09):
about myself and swimming. What wascool about it, I identified as a
swimmer, and more than that,as an athlete. I was jock.
You know, I got a degreein sociology. What what do you do
with that? I mean, whatare you doing with that? Nicole?
I mean, if it's really like, you know, the study of societies,
I guess I'm doing You are actuallydoing that? Yeah, you are.
(09:31):
It's going well. For you.But uh, you know, after
college ended for a lot of peoplewho are not going to be in the
Olympics in sports like swim, inany sport, if you're not going into
the pro ranks, and in swimmingthere wasn't really pro ranks. That's pretty
much Olympics. Yeah, Olympics orbust. I was not good enough to
(09:54):
be in the Olympics. So thatwas kind of the wake up point of
like who are you. You've beena swimmer and an athlete your whole life,
but now what you have a sociologydegree and what are you going to
do? So what did you do? I think I did what a lot
of people do. I went home, mommy, Daddy, thanks for paying
for that. I don't know whatI'm doing. And I waited tables.
(10:16):
I literally went out waited tables andgot some really funny temp jobs. I
remember a job where I worked forthe Disney store in Oakbrook and I had
to put on like the Sylvester theCat, that big hot outfit on and
you you were like a mascot.You were drenched. I'm sure it's like
the hottest thing you've ever done.You were shaking kids' hands. It was
disgusting, you know, for likefour dollars and eighty five yeahs for nothing.
(10:41):
But what I did is I actuallyhad a probably the first time in
my life where I went through kindof a low. I'm not a person
who often has depression tendencies, butif there was any point in my life,
that probably would have been a timewhen I didn't know who I was,
I didn't know what I wanted todo, and I was in the
(11:01):
doldrums, and my mom suggested,why don't you go talk to somebody,
And so I went to see likea counselor. Right, That's which back
then was like, ooh, don'ttell anybody. No, you didn't talk
about therapy in the nineties. God, no, now everybody talks about it.
Back then, nobody was like,oh, you're going to therapy,
what's wrong with you? Exactly?Totally. That's great though, that's nice.
(11:22):
She gave you that advice. That'shuge. I mean, my parents
are amazing, and my mom shejust knows. Yeah, right, that's
what part of what I love aboutbeing a mom. You have that intuition.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. So this therapist actually told me
something that I still use even today. She said, well, first of
all, let's do an exercise.Go home and write down all the times
(11:43):
in your life when you've been happiest. I went home and I wrote them
all down, and she goes andthen stare at that list and see what
comes to the surface and of allthese times in my life. And granted
I was only twenty two, butstill there's a lot of life experiences you
have. The times when I washappiest was when I was fittest and I
felt strongest physically, and I realizedthat there was a correlation between being fit
(12:09):
and strong in body and fit andstrong in mind, and happiness came when
those things came together. So Isaid, whatever I do in my life,
I need to be able to includefitness or sport in some way.
And that was a big eye opener. That's huge, yeah, huge,
And so yeah, I continued waitingtables, but I decided I would pursue
(12:31):
a new sport just to kind offulfill that new mantra I had created.
And the sport I decided to pursuewas triathlon. Did you do both running
and biking at the same time ordid you start one before the other.
Used to say it was going tobe triathlon. Well, I had watched
the iron Man when I was maybein middle school. Yeah, and I
(12:52):
saw this woman named Julie Moss crawlacross the finish line like disgust. She
looked gross, she had probably poopedher pants. She was like all the
things that happened to you. Yeah, she was crazy, her mind had
altered. And someone right before thefinish she was this young college girl who
is gonna win the biggest triathlon inthe world, right, And the cameras
(13:16):
are right on her and people arein her face, going, you can
do it, and she's like crawlingat the very end, and she had
been ahead for the whole race.I'm sure your listeners know what an iron
Man is. You probably talked aboutit before. Actually no, because you're
the first trathlete, so oh well, yeah, we have a two point
four mile swim, a one hundredand twelve mile bike, and then a
(13:37):
marathon twenty six point two. Yeah, it's hillacious. It's hilacious. When
I first saw it on TV andI saw this woman go through that kind
of pain and suffering, and thenjust to top it off, at the
very end, somebody passed her.She didn't even wins, and instead of
thinking that looks horrible, why wouldanyone do that? I looked at that
and I was like, that isamazing. She pushed herself to the very
(14:00):
edge, you know, and Iwas like, when can I do it?
You know, It's always in theback of my mind, I'm going
to do this something right, Soyou had it there. I had it
there. So when I started trainingfor triathlons and wanted to do my first
one, I just borrowed a bikeand I just started running. I had
done some running as an aprite,that's always been part of it, but
the bike was new and I knewit was a great swimmer, and I
just started starting to have a coachor anything or just kind of do your
(14:24):
own thing. Well, actually,this a little shout out to my high
school track coach, Mike Ehrenberg fromDowners Grove South. He was doing triathlons
and he was one of the onlypeople I knew who was doing home.
Yeah, it wasn't huge back then, it wasn't And I reached out to
him and he gave me some adviceand we went and did a race I
(14:45):
think together at the beginning, andlike a little sprint or something to get
you in it, or did youdo something more than that. Actually think
it was longer like an Olympic.For your first one, that might have
been even longer, but no,the very first one was kind of I
barely remember that. No one wasthere, there was no coach, no
training, but okay, yeah,I mean it just kind of went like
(15:05):
I did a race and then Ithought, why would I ever do another
one? And then the next seasoncame, I was like, I'm going
to do eight of them. Ijust kept going. That's how I got
into it too, where I waslike, Okay, that was horrible,
but when's the next one? Iwas like, what is it? Yeah?
Why why are you doing this ifyou're so hard? But it's just
you have to do it to understandit, to understand where your head is
(15:26):
and how you feel during and afterwards, and it really is. You can
train physically, but if you're notthere mentally, it can all fall apart.
And so that's part of the challenge. And I love that with marathons
too, where I finally have figuredout how to you know the mind f
that happens there at the end,how to try and kind of win it.
(15:46):
It's hard and you don't always getit, but you can try well.
And that's the thing, like thechallenge and the beauty of a sport
like triathlon. Try it's three sports, three sports. I mean, this
is for people who can't make itin just one sport. Pick when it's
three. And then you add themental part and the transitions and other things
(16:08):
you need to do, strength training. I mean, there's a lot,
there's a lot that goes into it. Yeah, but really it's a lifestyle.
And when you figure out that thatlifestyle is calling to you, it's
you get hooked. Yeah, it'sa drug and you need it very very
well. You end up getting podiumfinishes, you go pro. Talk about
that because I think it's hard forpeople to understand being a professional NFL player,
(16:32):
NBA that that pool is so small. Yet us everyday people can go
ooh, maybe I can actually bea pro. Yeah, it's still such
a cream of the crop. Imean, I'm age group and I'm hopefully
top five in an age group,and I mean, to me, I'm
like, that's winning. But thepro level is even just so much different
than the average person. Well there, you can get a pro card by
(16:52):
like getting a certain place in yourage group and a bunch of races,
being a pro and like making enoughmoney to not have to have another job.
That's a whole different deal. Yes, Yeah, and then being a
pro and making enough money to retireand not have to work again. There's
like six people, right. Ever, No, it's tough. Sponsorships are
tough. It's hard to totally doall of that. Yeah, it's a
fringe sport, and it's not necessarilya team sport. I think there have
(17:15):
been teams that have come around andpaid athletes. But when I was racing,
okay, so let's talk about this. Nineteen ninety five, I have
my first season. This is actuallypretty fun. I'm in Chicago. I'm
doing the Midwest races, and thequalifying race is the Chicago Triathlon, which
had like three thousand people. Itwas like the biggest race in the world.
(17:36):
It used to be the Missus T'sPerogi's Race, and before that it
was bud Light. Everything was sponsoredby beer. Right. Yeah. They
were taking like the top twelve orsomething in every age group. And I
finished and I was like eleventh,And then I went and looked at the
results and I was thirteenth, andI was like, what's that? And
they're like, you were drafting.I go, what's drafting? Oh no,
(18:00):
it was so he didn't make youget too. I didn't get dcuteh
I get it, cute, Oget penalty? Oh, they give you
a penalty. Okay. So Ididn't make our World's team. But I
called the guy like every three daysand I was like, did anyone drop
out? Did anybody not take it? Finally one day he called me back
and he goes, somebody's not doingit. You're in Oh my gosh.
And so in nineteen ninety five,in October, just three weeks after the
(18:25):
iron Man happened, totally different world. I wasn't doing iron Man's yet.
These were shorter distance races, theycalled them Olympic distance. It still took
two hours, very fast. People. I make this team and I head
down to Cancun, Mexico. Whathappened on the way there is the thing
that probably had the biggest impact onmy life and changed my life forever.
I think I know what that is. You met somebody, right, somebody
(18:49):
you still know very well. I'mone of those people who actually met their
spouse on an airplane he sat nextto me on the plane on the way
to Cancun, Mexico to do theWorld Championship. So my husband's name is
Tim de Boom, two time Ironmanchampion. He is. So we're like
kind of overlapping the past and thenthe nearer past. Yeah, all that
(19:11):
bat when I didn't know he satnext to you. I didn't know that
was how I knew you guys meton the flight, but I didn't know
it was because you were sitting rightnext to each other. Wos to me.
And in fact, when he gotto my row, there were two
really cute guys. One was cuterthan the other, and one of them
looked at his ticket and I thought, oh, that guy's going to sit
by me, but he sat inthe other row. And then Tim said,
the better looking one sat at lookingnice. So, oh, my
(19:36):
gosh. Yeah. And at thetime, Tim was a first year professional
triathlete. He had just burst outon the scene. He was twenty four.
I was twenty three. My god, we were young, yeah,
baby, and he had just donethe Hawaii Ironman in place tenth as a
twenty four year old in his firstpro race at Hawaii. Wow, that
(19:57):
was three weeks prior, I think, and he came and sat down next
to me, and he was alsoon the pro team for short course because
he was just a great athlete allaround. So I was just entering the
sport, basically going to Cancun tolike agle over the hot guys that were
getting on the airplane and do alittle race here and see what happened.
(20:18):
Right, and there he was.Tim was kind of already starting what would
become a twenty year career for him, which he was able to make a
career out of it more so thanmost people because of how good he was
and his sponsorships and everything else thathe did. And he was really good
looking and that also helps a lot. Right, Okay, so you guys
meet on the plane, I'm assumingyou just stay in touch. Do you
(20:41):
start dating right away? Oh?Yeah, this is like nuts. I
had moved to San Diego because Iwas like, all right, I got
to get out of Chicago and I'vedecided I'm good enough to see if I
could be even better in triathlin Imade this world team, so I moved
to San Diego. I'm doing swimpractice with Mark Allen and Welch oh my
gosh, like pros and it wasreally cool. Anyway, I wasn't that
(21:04):
good obviously, but it was stilllike eye opening and I just was like,
this is such a neat life.I want to pursue this. I
want to see how good I canget. To meet Tim And he sends
me a postcard. This is nineteenninety five. We didn't have cell phones,
nothing, no nothing. He wasscribbling my address down as we were
saying goodbye, you know, AndI get a postcard and it was just
(21:26):
the cutest thing. I think itsaid love the girl who holds the world
in a paper cup. It's fromDanny's song, which ended up being a
song that was basically our wedding song. Oh so I moved in with him
a few months later and we gotmarried one year after that. Oh my
gosh, wow, nineteen ninety six. Okay, so the two of you
(21:48):
are supporting each other's triathlon career forthe first and it was in Let's see,
when did you you want? IronMan Wisconsin in four So by then,
yeah, you guys have been marriedfor a while. You got married
in ninety six, got married inninety six. Okay. I turned pro
in nineteen ninety eight, Tim startedwinning big races and won the iron Man
in Hawaii in two thousand and oneand two thousand and two, and leading
(22:11):
up to that was like third,second, first, first, you know,
and then he just continued racing withlike the roller coaster. So he
was on a like a high careertrajectory at that point. And my career,
actually, I was really good atshort course racing. I wasn't necessarily
an Ironman athlete. This is what'skind of crazy. Yeah, I won
(22:33):
money in every race I ever did, even if it was just fifty bucks,
every race until my very last race, really, and I knew it
was time to hang it up,which is cool because this is the topic
of your whole podcast. Absolutely,Okay, So I decided. The interesting
thing is that a lot of people, you know, they don't plan for
what's next. They finish for somereason, they're injured, something happens,
(22:57):
all of a sudden, they're donewith sport, and then they're faced with,
oh my god, how do Imove forward? Right for me,
I wasn't looking for the next thing, but I was just open in my
life, and so while I wasstill racing as a pro triathlete, I
had this idea that came to meduring a training run. I'll never forget
(23:18):
that day. It was in Decemberof two thousand and three and I was
living in Lions, Colorado. Iwas in the off season, so you're
kind of out of shape, youdon't feel great, and I'm running kind
of jogging down Main Street and Ihave these big picture windows. At the
time, they had the Lion sodafountain and this huge window, and I
saw my reflection as I was runningby, and I had on all men's
(23:41):
training clothing because this is what existed. Yes, it didn't fit my body.
I did not look cute. Everythingwas all black, there was no
color, and I had like abeanie on my head. Some hair was
covered and I just remember seeing myselfgoing, oh my god, number one,
I look like a boy. Idon't feel like myself. I don't
feel good, I am not motivatedright now, and I just want to
(24:06):
feel pretty. That was the basicthought that came to mind, was this
word pretty. And I ran withthat for like literally about three more minutes,
and my brain was exploding on fire. It was like pretty, why
why can't you? When that thoughtcame to my mind, I was like,
I want this, but why can'tI do this? And then I
was like, I can do this, can't I do this? Why can't
(24:26):
I do this? It kind ofchanged on itself from a problem to an
opportunity. And I turned around,ran home, wrote the word pretty on
a piece of paper, and Isaid, I want to create a line
of women's clothing that you look,feel good and can perform well in.
And that was the beginning of mynext chapter. And so you did.
(24:47):
You made like a makeshift skirt thatyou use then in iron Man Wisconsin,
I did, and you win ironMan Wisconsin. So then your skirt is
on the front of everything. Imean, Nicole, that's crazy. You
couldn't ask for a better entree intothe next thing? Yeah right? And
and by the way I designed andkind of came up with this idea,
(25:10):
I made the first ever running skirtthat hadn't existed before. So not only
solving a properbody ripped you off,create something new? Yeah they did,
they did. They did. Allthe big companies ripped you off. You
were doing it way before anybody else. And I know because I did the
freaking story on you when I workedin news. I'm like, I saw
it somewhere. I think it wasin the little Rocky Mountain Sports. Yes,
(25:32):
it was amusing. I saw itin Rocky Mountain Sports, and I'm
like, I must have something fromthis line, and I need to find
out who this woman is. SoI literally I think I emailed you and
said, can I come do astory on you and see what this is
all about? And then I became, of course a skirt sports freak,
and my wardrobe is skirt sports.But the thing is Nicole. From there,
(25:55):
you create a business that affects notonly yourself obviously, because you become
a business owner and you go intoplaces that you've never thought that you'd be,
but you affected women and how theyfelt and how you felt on that
run. You did it for somany women of all sizes, and that
became a huge thing for you.It was like it didn't just need to
be the perfect Barbie, you knowlooking woman. It was for like we
(26:17):
were creating this for any woman tofeel good. And I mean that's I
just got goosebumps my hair standing onit. It's just so cool. It
was like the beginning of this tidalwave of women's sort of freedom of expression
in sport. Yeah, and Ican be pretty and yes as the same
time, and that is you know, it's crazy. So I obviously kept
(26:38):
training while I was thinking of,you know, this idea and working on
it. And then when I hadthis prototype and like actually won the biggest
race of my career, which wasnot the Iron Man in Hawaii that World
Champs, but I won an ironMan in any iron massive is freaking yes,
yeah hard. I still don't knowhow I did it. You know
why? Actually because you're scart secretweapon, ye streusskirt man. It gave
(27:00):
me strength. In fact, onthe race course it was a two loop
run. The people at the aidstations. On the first loop they were
like, oh, here comes thethird woman or second woman, because I
was started the run in third place, and by the second loop when I
was winning. Actually after the firstloop, I would go by and they
go, what is she wearing?Is that a skirt? You could hear
(27:22):
them, yeah, I could hearthem, So it was like this little
skirt was trailing me. On thesecond loop, they were like, oh,
my god, the first woman's coming. Who's it going to be?
And then they go it's the skirt. Oh wos the skirt? And so
you know we talk about identity.I went from being an athlete and maybe
Tim's wife a little bit, youknow, absolutely the skirt and that was
(27:42):
a title that I owned for fifteenyears. Oh yeah, as I built
that business very much. So whenI did that story on you, you
called them tricks because the skirt backwards. And I still't have a couple of
those legendary pieces of clothing that saytricks on them. This fandex may be
wearing out. I know it's probablytime to retire, but you know,
(28:04):
and half the little labels are comingoff. But it's fine, No,
it's it's it's good. So youbuild this business that just really explodes.
I mean you started in your garageand then you moved from warehouse to warehouse
and Boulder. You just keep gettingbigger. You start a nonprofit running start.
Then I was part of that motivator, oh my gosh. And on
the board yeah, and on theboard. And you had many women that
(28:26):
worked for you that were also veryyou know, you made everybody feel very
empowered, which was really cool.Then you came to a part where you
had to it was time to timeto be done, and you sold the
business and you guys I mean,you had a huge life change. Left
Boulder, came to Steamboat, andI was like, wait, what just
happened? What's going on? Andthat was then only life change. And
then I left social media for years. You left social pop you were like,
(28:48):
what happened to her? I know? And you also became sober.
Yeah, that was earlier in thein the journey, earlier while you were
still at skirt. Okay, allright, Yes, you had so many
things that happened. Yeah, andyou had a baby. I had a
baby. I mean it's just likeone domino after another, boom boom boom.
But you know, all the thingsyou learn from each path that you've
(29:11):
taken help advise the next path,right, And so being an athlete helped
me help guide me in the waythat I built Scirut Sports and the kind
of leader I was, and andwhen I recognized that I had a very
big problem with alcohol and needed toget sober, like that was going to
affect my ability to be the kindof human that I wanted to be and
(29:34):
the leader I wanted to be.And there's no way I could have had
a child if I was still drinking. You know that kind of stuff,
and so you get rid of thethings that no longer serve you and you
open to the next layer of thingsthat do. And with skirt sports,
fifteen years long career by time,right, yeah, it is, it
is. And I wanted to sellthat business and like walk away with you
(29:57):
know, the math of mountains ofmoney and do all the things. And
I didn't walk away with the massivemountains of money, but I walked away
feeling great about what I had accomplished, what I had done, the women
that whose lives were changed, andI I don't take that for granted.
(30:18):
And it might sound weird like youjust had a clothing company, but oh
no, it was different. Itchanged me, Nicole. I mean just
you know when I would wear thingsand you'd be at racist and somebody's like,
oh that's a cute, you know, or you'd have somebody else that's
wearing the same one, we're like, hey, skirt you know, it
was like this little sisterhood was andit did make you feel good. And
I wear them on my training runsnow and I just I feel awesome and
it's just fun to kind of go. And I'm not a skirt girl,
(30:41):
like I don't usually wear skirts,but I do wear them because I like
them and they're fun. There's greatpatterns, and it just makes you feel
good, you know. At theend of the day, I realized that
we were basically a body empowerment companyposing as a clothing company. That's a
weird way to put it. Wewere women's communities of women supporting other women.
(31:03):
That kind of just sort of theuniform we wore was the skirt or
the products we made, because thatwas part of it too, is that
we transcended just skirts. We madeall kinds of cool stuff. Oh yeah,
so many, so many things.I want to ask you about the
sobriety part. A lot of peoplewe talk about the lows and coming back
from lows. Was there a momentwhere you were like this is it got
(31:26):
to be done? Or was ita gradual Well, I will tell you.
I mean we can go into therabbit hole. I always had a
problem with drinking. I was nevera good drinker. I took the year
off at Yale. I mean,yeah, well that part totally. And
I mean, you know, you'rein the Midwest, You're just the life
(31:48):
revolved around drinking. Yeah, itreally did. And just because I was
a great athlete didn't mean that Iwasn't. It actually probably made me want
to drink more because it allowed meto let loose and be different in a
different way than I was when Iwas a perfect student and a perfect athlete
and all that. I was ahardcore drinker too. It was hardcore,
(32:09):
and I just can't imagine that Ididn't know you as that I know.
And I remember when we talked aboutit the first time, You're like,
oh wow, Yeah, I waskind of a surprise, very surprised.
But you know, I was ablackout drinker from the beginning. Basically,
not every single time I drank,but a lot and in college, and
I just knew that it was notright, but I so desperately did not
(32:34):
want to let it go because itallowed me to feel a certain way.
But yeah, I was still everyonce in a while acting out and like
getting too drunk and blacking out.And I was thirty. I was like,
it's done. I need to bedone. My marriage was going to
be done. That's really what happened. Yeah, Tim, you know,
he kind of said, I reallythink you need to stop drinking now,
(32:54):
and I said, okay, I'llstop. But our marriage was kind of
on the rocks, and in myhead, I was like, I'll stop
long enough, just so that wecan realize our marriage was not meant to
be. This is literally where myhead was. Wow, and then we'll
probably break up and then I canjust move on and continue whatever way I
(33:15):
wanted to be. But after monthsof not drinking and like digging back into
my relationship with Tim and like gettingreconnected, I realized that I didn't want
to go back to that, andin fact, I wanted to be in
this marriage. And in fact,I liked how I felt every morning when
I woke up, and I likedthat I remembered the decisions I made the
(33:37):
night before, even if there werebad ones, at least I remembered them.
Holy count. So yeah, thatwas over fifteen years ago, was
it really? Yeah? That's good. That's good. Well yeah, and
you know, I'm open about ittoo, And I mean my kid has
known since basically day one, youknow, because as soon as she understood
Dad has a beer at night,but mom doesn't that sometimes she has a
(33:59):
fake beer, and then you haveto explain what that is. You know.
It was really funny. Actually,I have, you know, a
podcast I've run on and off foryears, and I remember telling her,
Hey, I'm gonna interview my friendKara Burns, and Kara she actually used
to be a meth addict and shewent to prison and but she got herself
healthy through running. She did runningstart or nonprofit. And my daughter Wilder
(34:22):
looked at me and she goes,did she used to sell you drugs?
And I was like no, Ijust drank, but with no judgment,
just curious, just just a question, and just like because she knows that
I'm safe and in a good placeand that I'm human right, and we're
all human and we can do stuffthat sucks and come back from it and
(34:45):
be great. Wow. Yeah,fifteen years that is that's pretty amazing.
So in that fifteen years since sobriety, you've kept your marriage together, you
have what are you laughing at?You just can't believe I shared that that
was okay. I said, ifshe sold the drugs, like, can
I keep that in here? Keepit in It's funny. Kids are just
(35:07):
they're no filter and they just askyou all those questions where you're like no.
I think my point too, isjust like it's better to just talk
about absolutely yes and pretend it didn'thappen, or tiptoe around things because your
kids are all going to go throughthese same things. Yeah, they definitely
are most definitely. Yeah, Soyou have Wilder, you and Tim have
(35:29):
Wilder while you're still living in Bolder, and then you do make that switch.
You're able to sell skirt sports.You come up to Steamboat and it
seems like it was just time tokind of get away from Boulder and get
up to the mountains. I neverthought i'd leave Bolder. Tim always wanted
to leave Bolder. He had endedhis career, and I think felt stifled
and stuck. But my business wasthere. We couldn't leave right when the
(35:53):
business was no longer there, wecould go anywhere, and we chose Steamboat
because we were like, we lovethese little out intowns we visited throughout our
training career, you know, ourracing careers. Let's pick one, and
we heard Steamboat is the best placefor kids. It was COVID, so
school wasn't really happening. Wilder wasin third grade, and we were just
like, it couldn't probably be abetter time, and so we had kind
(36:15):
of a dramatic like way that weended up getting up here Skirt Sports.
I was closing the business right asI sold it. I was still selling
all our inventory. And it waslike August sixteenth of twenty twenty. I
remember this day, and I hadplanned that I would sell all our inventory
by that day. On that day, we were coming up to Steamboat to
(36:37):
look at houses and we had actuallyput a bid on a house here and
we didn't get it. So wewere like, I'll just go on vacation.
So that morning I woke up andI sent an email to my email
list and I said, hey,guys, we have eighteen extra small black
one piece swimsuits left. Today's theday. I think it's the last day.
(36:57):
Thank you for everything. You've beenamazing. If you want a one
piece extra small black swimsuit, thisis it, right, because you never
know, right. I thought thecompany was being sold, but I wasn't
sure that it was one hundred peryright, yes, And by noon the
last one sold and I sent thatperson a note and said thank you,
you bought the last piece, andshe wrote me right back and said I've
(37:20):
been wearing your skirts for fourteen yearsand Austo made me cry. But we
jump in the car. We're comingup to Steamboat and we get to Silverthorne,
and as you know from driving fromDenver to Steamboat, that's the last
place you have cell reception. Soyou basically get here and our reeltor calls.
We're like, hey, what's up. She goes, are you sitting
down? Yeah, we're on ourway. We're in the car, and
she goes to, well, guesswhat. The other offer on the house
(37:42):
fell through. You just got it. And it was literally that like door
has to close for next door toopen kind of thing. And I was
like, oh my god, skirtsports is done, like really done.
Yeah, you just closed it.Wow, my role in it is done,
and this is happening. We areliterally moving here now. It's not
just let's see if we can inthe same day within an hour and a
(38:07):
half. Wow. So yeah,we got here and it was just it's
literally, I'll tell you the firstthing that happened. I slept a lot.
I bet running a business is tough. I didn't know I was that
tired. I was exhausted. Yeah, yeah, exhausted. But every day
I woke up and it just feltlike a vacation. Still does does it
(38:28):
still? Yeah? Really, weare almost four years later. Gosh,
yeah, and you're well engulfed inthis community now, and it's a cool
community. I mean, Steamboat hasa lot of athletes. You can still
do all the fun things, andyou've explored more sports. Yeah, at
the same time, you've also hadsome surgeries, You've had some other things
that have happened along the way.But I feel like you're in a really
(38:49):
good spot now. I am.And it's interesting. I was talking to
a friend, actually, you know, Laura from Laura Bar. Have you
done some stuff with Laura? Ido. She's been a friend and kind
of like a I advise her ina way. I just love her.
And I was explaining to her whatI'm onto now, and she goes,
Nicole, what you've done for fouryears is what we in the psychology world
(39:09):
called sampling. She's gotten into likepositive psychology. She's so cool and I
was like sampling. She's like,yeah, it's when you try all kinds
of things and they often don't work, so you move on to the next
thing. So for the last fouryears I've basically been sampling. I have
felt like I needed to totally reinventmyself, do something totally different, separate,
(39:30):
completely from Skirt Sports, like allthese things. I started a kid's
business camp, and we have akid's business fair coming up in a few
weeks here, and I'm one ofthose organizers. I started an interview business,
an online interview business, which didn'treally fly, so I shut it
down, but it was really itwas a cool project. It's up with
(39:51):
coffee. I'm doing something with ohright now, yeah, with coffee,
Okay, all right, I'm providingCEO services to destination coffees because I'm coffee.
I was like, I'm gonna tryroasting coffee. So I call up
a local roaster and they're like,we kind of need leadership help, and
I was like, all right,let's do it. So I'm helping them
grow their business. You know,it's really exciting and really fun. But
(40:12):
what's really crazy is when you thinkabout the idea of things coming full circle
in your life. I have recentlyregained ownership of skirt Sports. Okay,
breaking news, are you kidding me? Oh my gosh, Nicole, Well,
I knew that they Sarah had shutit down a few months ago,
and I grabbed a bunch of stuffon sale because they were getting rid of
(40:37):
all their inventory. Yeah, sowhoa, So what does that mean?
Well, it's interesting because the waySarah and I worked things was she gave
it a really good go and itjust didn't. It wasn't going to work
for her, and so she shutit down and I could take it back,
and so I decided I would,and I would explore what to do
(40:58):
next. And that is the faceI'm in. I'm actually a little past
that. I have been exploring whatto do, and I've decided that the
community that existed is still just sowonderful, passionate, and they really want
to stay connected, and so Iam creating a business to help them do
that. Wow uh huh. Inaddition to creating the products again, they're
(41:22):
coming back. I literally, SoI ran this morning and I looked at
my skirts and I thought, I'mnever going to have another awesome skirt sport,
and I better enjoy all of thesethat I have here and rotate properly
so nothing gets worn out. Nicole, that's huge, Hue. Here's here's
the thing. It is huge.And and so I really feel like I've
had nothing to talk about. Likeif you had a year ago, I'd
(41:44):
be like, I don't know,if I used to do the podcast.
This is perfect time, It's perfectreach out. Yeah, because I'm moving
into the next marathon, or thenext nine your manner, the next whatever
you want to call it. I'mactually calling it Project n D E ND
oh yeah, oh I love it. Gwyneth Paltrow can name her company after
(42:04):
herself, name in Mind, andit's a project can. So what I'm
actually starting with is a resale sitebecause it takes a long time to make
products, and our products can livefor a really long time, and women's
bodies change, and so a styleor size that fit you ten years ago,
that product may still be great it'sbeen in your closet for five years
(42:25):
untouched because you're like, I'll fitin it again someday. But that's defeatist
thinking. Our bodies are changing.Just embrace it, right yep. So
I'm creating a resale site so womencan connect share. We love sharing,
and at the end of the day, it's really about celebrating women's bodies.
And at the end of the day, that's what skirt sports was about.
So I'm starting with this way forwomen to interact through a marketplace, and
(42:51):
then we are looking into a newway to do production that's better on the
planet. And it's nice because Iknow that is really hard and that was
a ruggle trying to figure out howto mass produce. You and I talked
about that many times. And it'sa cost thing, and it's you know,
in some ways, you're like,Okay, well it cost this much.
Yeah, but it's doing all thesebad things, so it costs more
(43:12):
to do it here. So howdo you balance that out? And the
consumer's like, wait, why amI paying this much? Well, because
it costs this much to do thesethings the right way, right, and
then they don't want to pay forit, and I understand that. Yeah.
The other cool thing though, isthat four years ago when I was
ending, the way that we cando production now didn't exist. Oh,
so it's almost been a gift,oh to have this four year break,
(43:34):
Like in what way, what aresome of the differences? You know,
I'm going to just, for lackof a better way to say it,
I'm going to call it on demandmanufacturing. And so you either run really
small batch and have it shipped directlyfrom the factory to your person. So
I will never have a warehouse,right, I will never know inventory,
I won't have inventory. Okay,that's that was a problem. Yeah,
(43:54):
and so you can do that orpotentially every time someone orders they just make
the one cool and how cool wouldthat be? Is that cost effective?
It might be, but at theend of the day, I don't need
to make a huge margin. It'sokay. I don't have to take a
ton of employees and warehouses and allthat anyway anymore. That's true. I
just I need to make something orelse I'm not. I can't do it.
(44:16):
Yeah, it's not a nonprofit,but I want to help women feel
great. And if we can makethis work in a way that is respectful
of all sides of the equation,then I'm going to do it. Wow.
And in the meantime, I'm goingto get that little indie project up
and run in and give people achance to connect online, oh my goodness,
(44:36):
and give their existing clothing a secondlife or a third life or whatever
it is, which is really coolbecause there are times where there's been something
where I haven't gotten it, andthen I'm like, oh, darn,
I missed that pattern, and maybeit's sitting in somebody's closets and bought it
and they can't use it, andyou can just do the whole exchange kind
of thing, you know in theolden days of newspapers when they had love
connections. Yeah, I want tohave like a little love connections thing like
(44:59):
size medium women seeking, you know, free love print, Jim Girl.
Perfect. Yeah, anyway, mygosh, that's perfect. I think it'll
be fun. I mean, oh, Nicole, this is so exciting.
You know, I had no ideaI get to break that. Do I
get to break that? You're breakingthe news. I haven't done an interview
in forever, I know. Butyeah, it's just it's about celebrating women
(45:21):
and as weird. Does it soundcelebrating women's bodies. Yeah, no,
it's it's very important, yeap isit's important to feel good and in your
own body, whether it looks acertain way, and to know that you
look good. It's huge. Itis look good, feel good, and
do everything better in your life.Absolutely. Wow. Okay, well,
(45:42):
so now I have the breaking news. I got to ask our last question.
And you've listened to a podcast ortwo, so you kind of know
this, and we've alluded to itwith sobriety and going through a business and
things like that. When there arethose lows in life and you talk to
a lot of people, what doyou tell people on how to get back
up from down times? The wayI approach it is just get to the
(46:04):
next mile, next aid station,next mile marker. You know, it's
the hypothetical race of life. Ifyou try to get all the way to
the twenty six point two end ofthe marathon, it's too far, you
give up. But you can getto the next one and then you can
stop for a minute and get refreshedand like make sure you're still on course
(46:24):
and all that stuff, and getthe next witch. Just keep moving,
just keep going, don't go back, keep going forward. I love it.
That's great. This was so much, so much fun. Thank you.
It's so good to see you.We haven't seen each other in a
year or so. And hopefully onetime when I come up here, we
can bike again. We've biked before, we've ran before. Oh it's fun.
(46:46):
Yes, we need to for sure. Yeah, your podcast is coming
back and you can start doing yourpodcast again. Start doing it again.
Okay, all right, run thisworld, Run this world with Nicole the
Boom and Susie Wrigen's going to beon it. I would love to be
on your podcast. Let's do it. We tried to one time, you
were coming down to Denver and wekind of missed each other. But we'll
do it this year. Okay,deal, all right? Thanks to Cale,
(47:07):
Thank you Nicole. New episodes ofCut, Traded, Fired, Retired
I released on Tuesdays on nearly everypodcast platform. Please follow, download,
and review this podcast wherever you listento podcasts, and you can get social
and find out about new episodes onTwitter and Instagram at ctf our podcast and
check out the website ctfurpodcast dot com. To find out more about me,
(47:29):
visit Susiewarton dot com. Thanks forlistening, and until next time, please
be careful, be safe, andbe kind. Take care
While I was still racing as apro triathlete. I had this idea that
came to me during a training run, kind of jogging down Main Street and
I have these big picture windows.At the time, they had the Lion
soda fountain and this huge window,and I saw my reflection as I was
running by, and I had onall men's training clothing. It didn't fit
(00:21):
my body. I did not lookcute. Everything was all black, and
I just remember seeing myself going,oh my god, number one, I
look like a boy. I don'tfeel like myself. I don't feel good.
I am not motivated right now,and I just want to feel pretty.
I turned around, ran home,wrote the word pretty on a piece
(00:41):
of paper, and I said,I want to create a line of women's
clothing that you look, feel goodand can perform well. In Welcome to
Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired, a podcast featuring conversations with professional athletes
and coaches who have sat down totell their stories of setbacks and how they
were able to move forward. I'myour host, Susie Wargen. This episode's
(01:03):
a little different for a few reasons. For starters, it's a female professional
athlete and her sport is triathlon,not typically one we think about all the
time. I met Nicole de Boomwhen she was just starting her business called
Skirt Sports. She lived in Boulderand had created a product that no one
had seen before. These days,you see fun workout clothing for women all
(01:23):
over the place, But back then, Nicole's company was original. Before she
became a business owner, she wasa professional triathlete and so was her husband
Tim. The da Booms were quitethe power couple in Boulder, both as
athletes and Nicole with her business.Then she became a mom, and fifteen
years after creating her dream business,Nicole sold it and the da Booms moved
(01:44):
to Steamboat. She got off socialmedia and dove into figuring out life.
Four years later, she's come fullcircle, which you'll hear about in our
conversation. She's had her ups anddowns as an athlete, a business owner,
and personally. Fifteen years ago,realized drinking was about to tear her
marriage apart, so she stopped andhas been sober ever since. Ladies and
(02:06):
gentlemen, My good friend Nicole toBoom got traded, Fired, Were Retired?
Podcast with Susie Wargin, Hey,Nicole to Boom How are you hi,
Susie Origin, How are you welcome? Welcome to my town, I
know, welcome to Steamboat. Yeah, I'm hanging out in Steamboat today and
I took a flyer and said,hey, are you available now that you're
(02:28):
up here? And do you wantto be the third female on my podcast?
Which is really cool? And yeah, I'm super honored. You're a
traditional athlete from what I typically have, So this is cool. I know,
don't don't tune out yet. It'sstill going to be really fun.
There's gonna be a lot of goodstuff. Yeah, and we know each
other, so there might be someoversharing exactly, I know, exactly,
(02:50):
So this is great. You livein Steamboat now, but you spent a
lot of time in Boulder. That'swhen I got to know you, when
you were the head of Skirt Sports. But you have a super cool background
as a professional triathlete and swimmer,and we're going to kind of go through
all of that. So let's goback to the beginning, shall we.
Yes, I know you grew upin Chicago. Is that where you were
born? Yeah, born in Chicagoand raised in the suburbs a town called
(03:14):
Downers Grove, Illinois. At thetime, it was an unincorporated town kind
of near Naperville. A lot ofpeople know Naperville and oak Brook. So
yeah, I was your typical justcrazy outdoor kid running around doing all the
stuff. And you were a swimmerfor sure, I know that. What
else did you do and how didyou get into swimming? Well? I
did everything, okay, So basicallyI had an older sister two years older,
(03:37):
and my parents were just like,just do it all, and they
like threw me in all her sports. Yeah, totally now that I'm a
parent, if I had two kids, I would do that too. Yeah,
I only have the one, Soyeah, I tried everything. I
remember, you know, soccer,gymnastics. I mean, they threw you
in it all, and it wasall the like bigger sports, most of
the sports you usually cover. Itwasn't the individual endurance type sports have mountain
(04:00):
biking out there, skiing or anythinglike that that I do now in my
fifties, right, But the sportthat I really excelled in right from the
beginning was swimming, even at sixyears old. And in fact, I
remember my parents put me in swimlessons when I was like four or five.
And you started on one corner ofthe pool, like the beginners were
there and that's usually where you spentthe six weeks or whatever doing lessons.
(04:25):
On the very first day, Iwent from that corner to the next group,
to the next group, the nextgroup, the next group, and
I ended up in the highest groupdoing backstroke outside of the pool on the
first day and they were like,Okay, she knows how to swim.
This girl might have something. Wow. And then it just kind of and
you loved it, I assume,and it grew from there or did you
love it? I mean, that'sthe thing when you're a kid at that
(04:46):
age, you don't know what youlove yet. I don't think. But
I swam. I was put inswim team year round, swim team from
six years old, and I didall the other sports in school in junior
high and all of that, butswimming was a constant and I came to
love it. It just became asecond home, a place I felt extremely
natural. Interesting. Yeah, it'smy worst of the three as far as
(05:09):
triathlon goes. And I just can'tget that. I don't mind it,
but I can't get that I loveit. But probably because I'm not very
good at it. Well, Idon't love it anymore. I mean I
don't. I barely swim anymore,but you know, and I don't miss
five am workouts and diving into abrutal cold pool and staring at the black
line and all that. But atthe time, you know, what I
(05:30):
came to really love about swimming werethe things all kids say my friends.
You know, you got to knowthe other kids. You think you're just
staring at a black, black line. I know, and you are when
you're actually swimming, but you alsotouch the wall and you stop, and
you hang out with friends, andthere's boys and everybody's wearing swim suits.
It's true. And then you're inhigh school and there's hormones and there's this
(05:51):
whole other piece of swimming that like, it's just part of it, right.
Funny. It's like coming of agein a swimming pool is a thing.
So funny. So when did yougraduate from high school? Nineteen ninety
and ninety so you qualified for theOlympic trials in nineteen eighty eight, then
you're just a sophomore in high school. Holy cow, Oh my gosh,
that had to be crazy. Itwas a whirlwind. Actually, I was
(06:14):
a breaststroker. I swam one hundredbreaststroke at that age and stage, and
I was good. So my parentsbrought me over to like the club team
in our area in Westmont Swim Clubactually, and my coach was named Dave
Crodiac. We used to call himcote Rack. I don't know why.
He's an awesome guy. And thefirst meat I ever did where I did
pretty well, he still didn't reallyknow my name. I could tell the
(06:39):
next meet I qualified for nationals andhe was like, WHOA. The next
meet I went to Nationals and Iwas second place at Junior Nationals and made
Olympic Trials by like two seconds,and he was like, everyone's gonna hear
your name now. It just wentso fast, no kidding. It was
one of those like I didn't evenhave time to think about it. I
(07:00):
was just doing. And my naturalability in the pool was just so obvious.
And you know earlier I mentioned thewater in the pool was like a
home. I wish that for everyonethat they can find something in their lives
that you walk into it and youjust know what to do. I can
walk into any pool deck and belike, where's the kickboards? What lane
(07:23):
should I go in, Hey,can we circle swim? You know,
it's like walking into your kitchen.You just kind of know where everything is
and you can just go in thesmell of chlorine and that heat and all
that, you know. I mean, there's very much nostalgia to that.
Wow. And so did you goto the Olympic Trials? I did.
I sam Olympic Trials in nineteen eightyeight. That was when Janet evansh with
(07:43):
her Windmilly arms. She was likeon fire. And this guy named Matt
Beyondy and I remember being in thewarm up pool after he broke like a
national or world record and you know, fifty free and watching him from the
side of this little kid, youknow. And Olympic t were nothing.
They were There was no magic tothe Olympic Trials. There were I think
(08:03):
eighty four people in my event.I was forty second. Okay, I
smack dab in the middle. Buthey, you were there. I was
there sixteen years old, and itwas at that moment when I quit every
other sport and focused one hundred percenton swimming. And then did that take
you to Yale? Or how didyou decide on Yale? And did you
(08:24):
swim at Yale. A lot ofgood questions in that. Basically, here's
the crazy thing. I never gotfaster when I quit every other sport and
just focused on swimming. Really,I was still amazing swimmer and recruited to
colleges all over the country, andI did choose Yale, even though they
don't offer athletic scholarships. My parentsthey were like, really, you could
(08:48):
go to Michigan or UCLA and it'sall paid for. I guess what.
I wanted to go there, andI did swim there. I swam three
of the four years. I hada year off for partying just put I'm
just being honest, absolutely, andthat did not pay off. And I
came back my senior year and swamagain, and I just learned a lot
(09:09):
about myself and swimming. What wascool about it, I identified as a
swimmer, and more than that,as an athlete. I was jock.
You know, I got a degreein sociology. What what do you do
with that? I mean, whatare you doing with that? Nicole?
I mean, if it's really like, you know, the study of societies,
I guess I'm doing You are actuallydoing that? Yeah, you are.
(09:31):
It's going well. For you.But uh, you know, after
college ended for a lot of peoplewho are not going to be in the
Olympics in sports like swim, inany sport, if you're not going into
the pro ranks, and in swimmingthere wasn't really pro ranks. That's pretty
much Olympics. Yeah, Olympics orbust. I was not good enough to
(09:54):
be in the Olympics. So thatwas kind of the wake up point of
like who are you. You've beena swimmer and an athlete your whole life,
but now what you have a sociologydegree and what are you going to
do? So what did you do? I think I did what a lot
of people do. I went home, mommy, Daddy, thanks for paying
for that. I don't know whatI'm doing. And I waited tables.
(10:16):
I literally went out waited tables andgot some really funny temp jobs. I
remember a job where I worked forthe Disney store in Oakbrook and I had
to put on like the Sylvester theCat, that big hot outfit on and
you you were like a mascot.You were drenched. I'm sure it's like
the hottest thing you've ever done.You were shaking kids' hands. It was
disgusting, you know, for likefour dollars and eighty five yeahs for nothing.
(10:41):
But what I did is I actuallyhad a probably the first time in
my life where I went through kindof a low. I'm not a person
who often has depression tendencies, butif there was any point in my life,
that probably would have been a timewhen I didn't know who I was,
I didn't know what I wanted todo, and I was in the
(11:01):
doldrums, and my mom suggested,why don't you go talk to somebody,
And so I went to see likea counselor. Right, That's which back
then was like, ooh, don'ttell anybody. No, you didn't talk
about therapy in the nineties. God, no, now everybody talks about it.
Back then, nobody was like,oh, you're going to therapy,
what's wrong with you? Exactly?Totally. That's great though, that's nice.
(11:22):
She gave you that advice. That'shuge. I mean, my parents
are amazing, and my mom shejust knows. Yeah, right, that's
what part of what I love aboutbeing a mom. You have that intuition.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. So this therapist actually told me
something that I still use even today. She said, well, first of
all, let's do an exercise.Go home and write down all the times
(11:43):
in your life when you've been happiest. I went home and I wrote them
all down, and she goes andthen stare at that list and see what
comes to the surface and of allthese times in my life. And granted
I was only twenty two, butstill there's a lot of life experiences you
have. The times when I washappiest was when I was fittest and I
felt strongest physically, and I realizedthat there was a correlation between being fit
(12:09):
and strong in body and fit andstrong in mind, and happiness came when
those things came together. So Isaid, whatever I do in my life,
I need to be able to includefitness or sport in some way.
And that was a big eye opener. That's huge, yeah, huge,
And so yeah, I continued waitingtables, but I decided I would pursue
(12:31):
a new sport just to kind offulfill that new mantra I had created.
And the sport I decided to pursuewas triathlon. Did you do both running
and biking at the same time ordid you start one before the other.
Used to say it was going tobe triathlon. Well, I had watched
the iron Man when I was maybein middle school. Yeah, and I
(12:52):
saw this woman named Julie Moss crawlacross the finish line like disgust. She
looked gross, she had probably poopedher pants. She was like all the
things that happened to you. Yeah, she was crazy, her mind had
altered. And someone right before thefinish she was this young college girl who
is gonna win the biggest triathlon inthe world, right, And the cameras
(13:16):
are right on her and people arein her face, going, you can
do it, and she's like crawlingat the very end, and she had
been ahead for the whole race.I'm sure your listeners know what an iron
Man is. You probably talked aboutit before. Actually no, because you're
the first trathlete, so oh well, yeah, we have a two point
four mile swim, a one hundredand twelve mile bike, and then a
(13:37):
marathon twenty six point two. Yeah, it's hillacious. It's hilacious. When
I first saw it on TV andI saw this woman go through that kind
of pain and suffering, and thenjust to top it off, at the
very end, somebody passed her.She didn't even wins, and instead of
thinking that looks horrible, why wouldanyone do that? I looked at that
and I was like, that isamazing. She pushed herself to the very
(14:00):
edge, you know, and Iwas like, when can I do it?
You know, It's always in theback of my mind, I'm going
to do this something right, Soyou had it there. I had it
there. So when I started trainingfor triathlons and wanted to do my first
one, I just borrowed a bikeand I just started running. I had
done some running as an aprite,that's always been part of it, but
the bike was new and I knewit was a great swimmer, and I
just started starting to have a coachor anything or just kind of do your
(14:24):
own thing. Well, actually,this a little shout out to my high
school track coach, Mike Ehrenberg fromDowners Grove South. He was doing triathlons
and he was one of the onlypeople I knew who was doing home.
Yeah, it wasn't huge back then, it wasn't And I reached out to
him and he gave me some adviceand we went and did a race I
(14:45):
think together at the beginning, andlike a little sprint or something to get
you in it, or did youdo something more than that. Actually think
it was longer like an Olympic.For your first one, that might have
been even longer, but no,the very first one was kind of I
barely remember that. No one wasthere, there was no coach, no
training, but okay, yeah,I mean it just kind of went like
(15:05):
I did a race and then Ithought, why would I ever do another
one? And then the next seasoncame, I was like, I'm going
to do eight of them. Ijust kept going. That's how I got
into it too, where I waslike, Okay, that was horrible,
but when's the next one? Iwas like, what is it? Yeah?
Why why are you doing this ifyou're so hard? But it's just
you have to do it to understandit, to understand where your head is
(15:26):
and how you feel during and afterwards, and it really is. You can
train physically, but if you're notthere mentally, it can all fall apart.
And so that's part of the challenge. And I love that with marathons
too, where I finally have figuredout how to you know the mind f
that happens there at the end,how to try and kind of win it.
(15:46):
It's hard and you don't always getit, but you can try well.
And that's the thing, like thechallenge and the beauty of a sport
like triathlon. Try it's three sports, three sports. I mean, this
is for people who can't make itin just one sport. Pick when it's
three. And then you add themental part and the transitions and other things
(16:08):
you need to do, strength training. I mean, there's a lot,
there's a lot that goes into it. Yeah, but really it's a lifestyle.
And when you figure out that thatlifestyle is calling to you, it's
you get hooked. Yeah, it'sa drug and you need it very very
well. You end up getting podiumfinishes, you go pro. Talk about
that because I think it's hard forpeople to understand being a professional NFL player,
(16:32):
NBA that that pool is so small. Yet us everyday people can go
ooh, maybe I can actually bea pro. Yeah, it's still such
a cream of the crop. Imean, I'm age group and I'm hopefully
top five in an age group,and I mean, to me, I'm
like, that's winning. But thepro level is even just so much different
than the average person. Well there, you can get a pro card by
(16:52):
like getting a certain place in yourage group and a bunch of races,
being a pro and like making enoughmoney to not have to have another job.
That's a whole different deal. Yes, Yeah, and then being a
pro and making enough money to retireand not have to work again. There's
like six people, right. Ever, No, it's tough. Sponsorships are
tough. It's hard to totally doall of that. Yeah, it's a
fringe sport, and it's not necessarilya team sport. I think there have
(17:15):
been teams that have come around andpaid athletes. But when I was racing,
okay, so let's talk about this. Nineteen ninety five, I have
my first season. This is actuallypretty fun. I'm in Chicago. I'm
doing the Midwest races, and thequalifying race is the Chicago Triathlon, which
had like three thousand people. Itwas like the biggest race in the world.
(17:36):
It used to be the Missus T'sPerogi's Race, and before that it
was bud Light. Everything was sponsoredby beer. Right. Yeah. They
were taking like the top twelve orsomething in every age group. And I
finished and I was like eleventh,And then I went and looked at the
results and I was thirteenth, andI was like, what's that? And
they're like, you were drafting.I go, what's drafting? Oh no,
(18:00):
it was so he didn't make youget too. I didn't get dcuteh
I get it, cute, Oget penalty? Oh, they give you
a penalty. Okay. So Ididn't make our World's team. But I
called the guy like every three daysand I was like, did anyone drop
out? Did anybody not take it? Finally one day he called me back
and he goes, somebody's not doingit. You're in Oh my gosh.
And so in nineteen ninety five,in October, just three weeks after the
(18:25):
iron Man happened, totally different world. I wasn't doing iron Man's yet.
These were shorter distance races, theycalled them Olympic distance. It still took
two hours, very fast. People. I make this team and I head
down to Cancun, Mexico. Whathappened on the way there is the thing
that probably had the biggest impact onmy life and changed my life forever.
I think I know what that is. You met somebody, right, somebody
(18:49):
you still know very well. I'mone of those people who actually met their
spouse on an airplane he sat nextto me on the plane on the way
to Cancun, Mexico to do theWorld Championship. So my husband's name is
Tim de Boom, two time Ironmanchampion. He is. So we're like
kind of overlapping the past and thenthe nearer past. Yeah, all that
(19:11):
bat when I didn't know he satnext to you. I didn't know that
was how I knew you guys meton the flight, but I didn't know
it was because you were sitting rightnext to each other. Wos to me.
And in fact, when he gotto my row, there were two
really cute guys. One was cuterthan the other, and one of them
looked at his ticket and I thought, oh, that guy's going to sit
by me, but he sat inthe other row. And then Tim said,
the better looking one sat at lookingnice. So, oh, my
(19:36):
gosh. Yeah. And at thetime, Tim was a first year professional
triathlete. He had just burst outon the scene. He was twenty four.
I was twenty three. My god, we were young, yeah,
baby, and he had just donethe Hawaii Ironman in place tenth as a
twenty four year old in his firstpro race at Hawaii. Wow, that
(19:57):
was three weeks prior, I think, and he came and sat down next
to me, and he was alsoon the pro team for short course because
he was just a great athlete allaround. So I was just entering the
sport, basically going to Cancun tolike agle over the hot guys that were
getting on the airplane and do alittle race here and see what happened.
(20:18):
Right, and there he was.Tim was kind of already starting what would
become a twenty year career for him, which he was able to make a
career out of it more so thanmost people because of how good he was
and his sponsorships and everything else thathe did. And he was really good
looking and that also helps a lot. Right, Okay, so you guys
meet on the plane, I'm assumingyou just stay in touch. Do you
(20:41):
start dating right away? Oh?Yeah, this is like nuts. I
had moved to San Diego because Iwas like, all right, I got
to get out of Chicago and I'vedecided I'm good enough to see if I
could be even better in triathlin Imade this world team, so I moved
to San Diego. I'm doing swimpractice with Mark Allen and Welch oh my
gosh, like pros and it wasreally cool. Anyway, I wasn't that
(21:04):
good obviously, but it was stilllike eye opening and I just was like,
this is such a neat life.I want to pursue this. I
want to see how good I canget. To meet Tim And he sends
me a postcard. This is nineteenninety five. We didn't have cell phones,
nothing, no nothing. He wasscribbling my address down as we were
saying goodbye, you know, AndI get a postcard and it was just
(21:26):
the cutest thing. I think itsaid love the girl who holds the world
in a paper cup. It's fromDanny's song, which ended up being a
song that was basically our wedding song. Oh so I moved in with him
a few months later and we gotmarried one year after that. Oh my
gosh, wow, nineteen ninety six. Okay, so the two of you
(21:48):
are supporting each other's triathlon career forthe first and it was in Let's see,
when did you you want? IronMan Wisconsin in four So by then,
yeah, you guys have been marriedfor a while. You got married
in ninety six, got married inninety six. Okay. I turned pro
in nineteen ninety eight, Tim startedwinning big races and won the iron Man
in Hawaii in two thousand and oneand two thousand and two, and leading
(22:11):
up to that was like third,second, first, first, you know,
and then he just continued racing withlike the roller coaster. So he
was on a like a high careertrajectory at that point. And my career,
actually, I was really good atshort course racing. I wasn't necessarily
an Ironman athlete. This is what'skind of crazy. Yeah, I won
(22:33):
money in every race I ever did, even if it was just fifty bucks,
every race until my very last race, really, and I knew it
was time to hang it up,which is cool because this is the topic
of your whole podcast. Absolutely,Okay, So I decided. The interesting
thing is that a lot of people, you know, they don't plan for
what's next. They finish for somereason, they're injured, something happens,
(22:57):
all of a sudden, they're donewith sport, and then they're faced with,
oh my god, how do Imove forward? Right for me,
I wasn't looking for the next thing, but I was just open in my
life, and so while I wasstill racing as a pro triathlete, I
had this idea that came to meduring a training run. I'll never forget
(23:18):
that day. It was in Decemberof two thousand and three and I was
living in Lions, Colorado. Iwas in the off season, so you're
kind of out of shape, youdon't feel great, and I'm running kind
of jogging down Main Street and Ihave these big picture windows. At the
time, they had the Lion sodafountain and this huge window, and I
saw my reflection as I was runningby, and I had on all men's
(23:41):
training clothing because this is what existed. Yes, it didn't fit my body.
I did not look cute. Everythingwas all black, there was no
color, and I had like abeanie on my head. Some hair was
covered and I just remember seeing myselfgoing, oh my god, number one,
I look like a boy. Idon't feel like myself. I don't
feel good, I am not motivatedright now, and I just want to
(24:06):
feel pretty. That was the basicthought that came to mind, was this
word pretty. And I ran withthat for like literally about three more minutes,
and my brain was exploding on fire. It was like pretty, why
why can't you? When that thoughtcame to my mind, I was like,
I want this, but why can'tI do this? And then I
was like, I can do this, can't I do this? Why can't
(24:26):
I do this? It kind ofchanged on itself from a problem to an
opportunity. And I turned around,ran home, wrote the word pretty on
a piece of paper, and Isaid, I want to create a line
of women's clothing that you look,feel good and can perform well in.
And that was the beginning of mynext chapter. And so you did.
(24:47):
You made like a makeshift skirt thatyou use then in iron Man Wisconsin,
I did, and you win ironMan Wisconsin. So then your skirt is
on the front of everything. Imean, Nicole, that's crazy. You
couldn't ask for a better entree intothe next thing? Yeah right? And
and by the way I designed andkind of came up with this idea,
(25:10):
I made the first ever running skirtthat hadn't existed before. So not only
solving a properbody ripped you off,create something new? Yeah they did,
they did. They did. Allthe big companies ripped you off. You
were doing it way before anybody else. And I know because I did the
freaking story on you when I workedin news. I'm like, I saw
it somewhere. I think it wasin the little Rocky Mountain Sports. Yes,
(25:32):
it was amusing. I saw itin Rocky Mountain Sports, and I'm
like, I must have something fromthis line, and I need to find
out who this woman is. SoI literally I think I emailed you and
said, can I come do astory on you and see what this is
all about? And then I became, of course a skirt sports freak,
and my wardrobe is skirt sports.But the thing is Nicole. From there,
(25:55):
you create a business that affects notonly yourself obviously, because you become
a business owner and you go intoplaces that you've never thought that you'd be,
but you affected women and how theyfelt and how you felt on that
run. You did it for somany women of all sizes, and that
became a huge thing for you.It was like it didn't just need to
be the perfect Barbie, you knowlooking woman. It was for like we
(26:17):
were creating this for any woman tofeel good. And I mean that's I
just got goosebumps my hair standing onit. It's just so cool. It
was like the beginning of this tidalwave of women's sort of freedom of expression
in sport. Yeah, and Ican be pretty and yes as the same
time, and that is you know, it's crazy. So I obviously kept
(26:38):
training while I was thinking of,you know, this idea and working on
it. And then when I hadthis prototype and like actually won the biggest
race of my career, which wasnot the Iron Man in Hawaii that World
Champs, but I won an ironMan in any iron massive is freaking yes,
yeah hard. I still don't knowhow I did it. You know
why? Actually because you're scart secretweapon, ye streusskirt man. It gave
(27:00):
me strength. In fact, onthe race course it was a two loop
run. The people at the aidstations. On the first loop they were
like, oh, here comes thethird woman or second woman, because I
was started the run in third place, and by the second loop when I
was winning. Actually after the firstloop, I would go by and they
go, what is she wearing?Is that a skirt? You could hear
(27:22):
them, yeah, I could hearthem, So it was like this little
skirt was trailing me. On thesecond loop, they were like, oh,
my god, the first woman's coming. Who's it going to be?
And then they go it's the skirt. Oh wos the skirt? And so
you know we talk about identity.I went from being an athlete and maybe
Tim's wife a little bit, youknow, absolutely the skirt and that was
(27:42):
a title that I owned for fifteenyears. Oh yeah, as I built
that business very much. So whenI did that story on you, you
called them tricks because the skirt backwards. And I still't have a couple of
those legendary pieces of clothing that saytricks on them. This fandex may be
wearing out. I know it's probablytime to retire, but you know,
(28:04):
and half the little labels are comingoff. But it's fine, No,
it's it's it's good. So youbuild this business that just really explodes.
I mean you started in your garageand then you moved from warehouse to warehouse
and Boulder. You just keep gettingbigger. You start a nonprofit running start.
Then I was part of that motivator, oh my gosh. And on
the board yeah, and on theboard. And you had many women that
(28:26):
worked for you that were also veryyou know, you made everybody feel very
empowered, which was really cool.Then you came to a part where you
had to it was time to timeto be done, and you sold the
business and you guys I mean,you had a huge life change. Left
Boulder, came to Steamboat, andI was like, wait, what just
happened? What's going on? Andthat was then only life change. And
then I left social media for years. You left social pop you were like,
(28:48):
what happened to her? I know? And you also became sober.
Yeah, that was earlier in thein the journey, earlier while you were
still at skirt. Okay, allright, Yes, you had so many
things that happened. Yeah, andyou had a baby. I had a
baby. I mean it's just likeone domino after another, boom boom boom.
But you know, all the thingsyou learn from each path that you've
(29:11):
taken help advise the next path,right, And so being an athlete helped
me help guide me in the waythat I built Scirut Sports and the kind
of leader I was, and andwhen I recognized that I had a very
big problem with alcohol and needed toget sober, like that was going to
affect my ability to be the kindof human that I wanted to be and
(29:34):
the leader I wanted to be.And there's no way I could have had
a child if I was still drinking. You know that kind of stuff,
and so you get rid of thethings that no longer serve you and you
open to the next layer of thingsthat do. And with skirt sports,
fifteen years long career by time,right, yeah, it is, it
is. And I wanted to sellthat business and like walk away with you
(29:57):
know, the math of mountains ofmoney and do all the things. And
I didn't walk away with the massivemountains of money, but I walked away
feeling great about what I had accomplished, what I had done, the women
that whose lives were changed, andI I don't take that for granted.
(30:18):
And it might sound weird like youjust had a clothing company, but oh
no, it was different. Itchanged me, Nicole. I mean just
you know when I would wear thingsand you'd be at racist and somebody's like,
oh that's a cute, you know, or you'd have somebody else that's
wearing the same one, we're like, hey, skirt you know, it
was like this little sisterhood was andit did make you feel good. And
I wear them on my training runsnow and I just I feel awesome and
it's just fun to kind of go. And I'm not a skirt girl,
(30:41):
like I don't usually wear skirts,but I do wear them because I like
them and they're fun. There's greatpatterns, and it just makes you feel
good, you know. At theend of the day, I realized that
we were basically a body empowerment companyposing as a clothing company. That's a
weird way to put it. Wewere women's communities of women supporting other women.
(31:03):
That kind of just sort of theuniform we wore was the skirt or
the products we made, because thatwas part of it too, is that
we transcended just skirts. We madeall kinds of cool stuff. Oh yeah,
so many, so many things.I want to ask you about the
sobriety part. A lot of peoplewe talk about the lows and coming back
from lows. Was there a momentwhere you were like this is it got
(31:26):
to be done? Or was ita gradual Well, I will tell you.
I mean we can go into therabbit hole. I always had a
problem with drinking. I was nevera good drinker. I took the year
off at Yale. I mean,yeah, well that part totally. And
I mean, you know, you'rein the Midwest, You're just the life
(31:48):
revolved around drinking. Yeah, itreally did. And just because I was
a great athlete didn't mean that Iwasn't. It actually probably made me want
to drink more because it allowed meto let loose and be different in a
different way than I was when Iwas a perfect student and a perfect athlete
and all that. I was ahardcore drinker too. It was hardcore,
(32:09):
and I just can't imagine that Ididn't know you as that I know.
And I remember when we talked aboutit the first time, You're like,
oh wow, Yeah, I waskind of a surprise, very surprised.
But you know, I was ablackout drinker from the beginning. Basically,
not every single time I drank,but a lot and in college, and
I just knew that it was notright, but I so desperately did not
(32:34):
want to let it go because itallowed me to feel a certain way.
But yeah, I was still everyonce in a while acting out and like
getting too drunk and blacking out.And I was thirty. I was like,
it's done. I need to bedone. My marriage was going to
be done. That's really what happened. Yeah, Tim, you know,
he kind of said, I reallythink you need to stop drinking now,
(32:54):
and I said, okay, I'llstop. But our marriage was kind of
on the rocks, and in myhead, I was like, I'll stop
long enough, just so that wecan realize our marriage was not meant to
be. This is literally where myhead was. Wow, and then we'll
probably break up and then I canjust move on and continue whatever way I
(33:15):
wanted to be. But after monthsof not drinking and like digging back into
my relationship with Tim and like gettingreconnected, I realized that I didn't want
to go back to that, andin fact, I wanted to be in
this marriage. And in fact,I liked how I felt every morning when
I woke up, and I likedthat I remembered the decisions I made the
(33:37):
night before, even if there werebad ones, at least I remembered them.
Holy count. So yeah, thatwas over fifteen years ago, was
it really? Yeah? That's good. That's good. Well yeah, and
you know, I'm open about ittoo, And I mean my kid has
known since basically day one, youknow, because as soon as she understood
Dad has a beer at night,but mom doesn't that sometimes she has a
(33:59):
fake beer, and then you haveto explain what that is. You know.
It was really funny. Actually,I have, you know, a
podcast I've run on and off foryears, and I remember telling her,
Hey, I'm gonna interview my friendKara Burns, and Kara she actually used
to be a meth addict and shewent to prison and but she got herself
healthy through running. She did runningstart or nonprofit. And my daughter Wilder
(34:22):
looked at me and she goes,did she used to sell you drugs?
And I was like no, Ijust drank, but with no judgment,
just curious, just just a question, and just like because she knows that
I'm safe and in a good placeand that I'm human right, and we're
all human and we can do stuffthat sucks and come back from it and
(34:45):
be great. Wow. Yeah,fifteen years that is that's pretty amazing.
So in that fifteen years since sobriety, you've kept your marriage together, you
have what are you laughing at?You just can't believe I shared that that
was okay. I said, ifshe sold the drugs, like, can
I keep that in here? Keepit in It's funny. Kids are just
(35:07):
they're no filter and they just askyou all those questions where you're like no.
I think my point too, isjust like it's better to just talk
about absolutely yes and pretend it didn'thappen, or tiptoe around things because your
kids are all going to go throughthese same things. Yeah, they definitely
are most definitely. Yeah, Soyou have Wilder, you and Tim have
(35:29):
Wilder while you're still living in Bolder, and then you do make that switch.
You're able to sell skirt sports.You come up to Steamboat and it
seems like it was just time tokind of get away from Boulder and get
up to the mountains. I neverthought i'd leave Bolder. Tim always wanted
to leave Bolder. He had endedhis career, and I think felt stifled
and stuck. But my business wasthere. We couldn't leave right when the
(35:53):
business was no longer there, wecould go anywhere, and we chose Steamboat
because we were like, we lovethese little out intowns we visited throughout our
training career, you know, ourracing careers. Let's pick one, and
we heard Steamboat is the best placefor kids. It was COVID, so
school wasn't really happening. Wilder wasin third grade, and we were just
like, it couldn't probably be abetter time, and so we had kind
(36:15):
of a dramatic like way that weended up getting up here Skirt Sports.
I was closing the business right asI sold it. I was still selling
all our inventory. And it waslike August sixteenth of twenty twenty. I
remember this day, and I hadplanned that I would sell all our inventory
by that day. On that day, we were coming up to Steamboat to
(36:37):
look at houses and we had actuallyput a bid on a house here and
we didn't get it. So wewere like, I'll just go on vacation.
So that morning I woke up andI sent an email to my email
list and I said, hey,guys, we have eighteen extra small black
one piece swimsuits left. Today's theday. I think it's the last day.
(36:57):
Thank you for everything. You've beenamazing. If you want a one
piece extra small black swimsuit, thisis it, right, because you never
know, right. I thought thecompany was being sold, but I wasn't
sure that it was one hundred peryright, yes, And by noon the
last one sold and I sent thatperson a note and said thank you,
you bought the last piece, andshe wrote me right back and said I've
(37:20):
been wearing your skirts for fourteen yearsand Austo made me cry. But we
jump in the car. We're comingup to Steamboat and we get to Silverthorne,
and as you know from driving fromDenver to Steamboat, that's the last
place you have cell reception. Soyou basically get here and our reeltor calls.
We're like, hey, what's up. She goes, are you sitting
down? Yeah, we're on ourway. We're in the car, and
she goes to, well, guesswhat. The other offer on the house
(37:42):
fell through. You just got it. And it was literally that like door
has to close for next door toopen kind of thing. And I was
like, oh my god, skirtsports is done, like really done.
Yeah, you just closed it.Wow, my role in it is done,
and this is happening. We areliterally moving here now. It's not
just let's see if we can inthe same day within an hour and a
(38:07):
half. Wow. So yeah,we got here and it was just it's
literally, I'll tell you the firstthing that happened. I slept a lot.
I bet running a business is tough. I didn't know I was that
tired. I was exhausted. Yeah, yeah, exhausted. But every day
I woke up and it just feltlike a vacation. Still does does it
(38:28):
still? Yeah? Really, weare almost four years later. Gosh,
yeah, and you're well engulfed inthis community now, and it's a cool
community. I mean, Steamboat hasa lot of athletes. You can still
do all the fun things, andyou've explored more sports. Yeah, at
the same time, you've also hadsome surgeries, You've had some other things
that have happened along the way.But I feel like you're in a really
(38:49):
good spot now. I am.And it's interesting. I was talking to
a friend, actually, you know, Laura from Laura Bar. Have you
done some stuff with Laura? Ido. She's been a friend and kind
of like a I advise her ina way. I just love her.
And I was explaining to her whatI'm onto now, and she goes,
Nicole, what you've done for fouryears is what we in the psychology world
(39:09):
called sampling. She's gotten into likepositive psychology. She's so cool and I
was like sampling. She's like,yeah, it's when you try all kinds
of things and they often don't work, so you move on to the next
thing. So for the last fouryears I've basically been sampling. I have
felt like I needed to totally reinventmyself, do something totally different, separate,
(39:30):
completely from Skirt Sports, like allthese things. I started a kid's
business camp, and we have akid's business fair coming up in a few
weeks here, and I'm one ofthose organizers. I started an interview business,
an online interview business, which didn'treally fly, so I shut it
down, but it was really itwas a cool project. It's up with
(39:51):
coffee. I'm doing something with ohright now, yeah, with coffee,
Okay, all right, I'm providingCEO services to destination coffees because I'm coffee.
I was like, I'm gonna tryroasting coffee. So I call up
a local roaster and they're like,we kind of need leadership help, and
I was like, all right,let's do it. So I'm helping them
grow their business. You know,it's really exciting and really fun. But
(40:12):
what's really crazy is when you thinkabout the idea of things coming full circle
in your life. I have recentlyregained ownership of skirt Sports. Okay,
breaking news, are you kidding me? Oh my gosh, Nicole, Well,
I knew that they Sarah had shutit down a few months ago,
and I grabbed a bunch of stuffon sale because they were getting rid of
(40:37):
all their inventory. Yeah, sowhoa, So what does that mean?
Well, it's interesting because the waySarah and I worked things was she gave
it a really good go and itjust didn't. It wasn't going to work
for her, and so she shutit down and I could take it back,
and so I decided I would,and I would explore what to do
(40:58):
next. And that is the faceI'm in. I'm actually a little past
that. I have been exploring whatto do, and I've decided that the
community that existed is still just sowonderful, passionate, and they really want
to stay connected, and so Iam creating a business to help them do
that. Wow uh huh. Inaddition to creating the products again, they're
(41:22):
coming back. I literally, SoI ran this morning and I looked at
my skirts and I thought, I'mnever going to have another awesome skirt sport,
and I better enjoy all of thesethat I have here and rotate properly
so nothing gets worn out. Nicole, that's huge, Hue. Here's here's
the thing. It is huge.And and so I really feel like I've
had nothing to talk about. Likeif you had a year ago, I'd
(41:44):
be like, I don't know,if I used to do the podcast.
This is perfect time, It's perfectreach out. Yeah, because I'm moving
into the next marathon, or thenext nine your manner, the next whatever
you want to call it. I'mactually calling it Project n D E ND
oh yeah, oh I love it. Gwyneth Paltrow can name her company after
(42:04):
herself, name in Mind, andit's a project can. So what I'm
actually starting with is a resale sitebecause it takes a long time to make
products, and our products can livefor a really long time, and women's
bodies change, and so a styleor size that fit you ten years ago,
that product may still be great it'sbeen in your closet for five years
(42:25):
untouched because you're like, I'll fitin it again someday. But that's defeatist
thinking. Our bodies are changing.Just embrace it, right yep. So
I'm creating a resale site so womencan connect share. We love sharing,
and at the end of the day, it's really about celebrating women's bodies.
And at the end of the day, that's what skirt sports was about.
So I'm starting with this way forwomen to interact through a marketplace, and
(42:51):
then we are looking into a newway to do production that's better on the
planet. And it's nice because Iknow that is really hard and that was
a ruggle trying to figure out howto mass produce. You and I talked
about that many times. And it'sa cost thing, and it's you know,
in some ways, you're like,Okay, well it cost this much.
Yeah, but it's doing all thesebad things, so it costs more
(43:12):
to do it here. So howdo you balance that out? And the
consumer's like, wait, why amI paying this much? Well, because
it costs this much to do thesethings the right way, right, and
then they don't want to pay forit, and I understand that. Yeah.
The other cool thing though, isthat four years ago when I was
ending, the way that we cando production now didn't exist. Oh,
so it's almost been a gift,oh to have this four year break,
(43:34):
Like in what way, what aresome of the differences? You know,
I'm going to just, for lackof a better way to say it,
I'm going to call it on demandmanufacturing. And so you either run really
small batch and have it shipped directlyfrom the factory to your person. So
I will never have a warehouse,right, I will never know inventory,
I won't have inventory. Okay,that's that was a problem. Yeah,
(43:54):
and so you can do that orpotentially every time someone orders they just make
the one cool and how cool wouldthat be? Is that cost effective?
It might be, but at theend of the day, I don't need
to make a huge margin. It'sokay. I don't have to take a
ton of employees and warehouses and allthat anyway anymore. That's true. I
just I need to make something orelse I'm not. I can't do it.
(44:16):
Yeah, it's not a nonprofit,but I want to help women feel
great. And if we can makethis work in a way that is respectful
of all sides of the equation,then I'm going to do it. Wow.
And in the meantime, I'm goingto get that little indie project up
and run in and give people achance to connect online, oh my goodness,
(44:36):
and give their existing clothing a secondlife or a third life or whatever
it is, which is really coolbecause there are times where there's been something
where I haven't gotten it, andthen I'm like, oh, darn,
I missed that pattern, and maybeit's sitting in somebody's closets and bought it
and they can't use it, andyou can just do the whole exchange kind
of thing, you know in theolden days of newspapers when they had love
connections. Yeah, I want tohave like a little love connections thing like
(44:59):
size medium women seeking, you know, free love print, Jim Girl.
Perfect. Yeah, anyway, mygosh, that's perfect. I think it'll
be fun. I mean, oh, Nicole, this is so exciting.
You know, I had no ideaI get to break that. Do I
get to break that? You're breakingthe news. I haven't done an interview
in forever, I know. Butyeah, it's just it's about celebrating women
(45:21):
and as weird. Does it soundcelebrating women's bodies. Yeah, no,
it's it's very important, yeap isit's important to feel good and in your
own body, whether it looks acertain way, and to know that you
look good. It's huge. Itis look good, feel good, and
do everything better in your life.Absolutely. Wow. Okay, well,
(45:42):
so now I have the breaking news. I got to ask our last question.
And you've listened to a podcast ortwo, so you kind of know
this, and we've alluded to itwith sobriety and going through a business and
things like that. When there arethose lows in life and you talk to
a lot of people, what doyou tell people on how to get back
up from down times? The wayI approach it is just get to the
(46:04):
next mile, next aid station,next mile marker. You know, it's
the hypothetical race of life. Ifyou try to get all the way to
the twenty six point two end ofthe marathon, it's too far, you
give up. But you can getto the next one and then you can
stop for a minute and get refreshedand like make sure you're still on course
(46:24):
and all that stuff, and getthe next witch. Just keep moving,
just keep going, don't go back, keep going forward. I love it.
That's great. This was so much, so much fun. Thank you.
It's so good to see you.We haven't seen each other in a
year or so. And hopefully onetime when I come up here, we
can bike again. We've biked before, we've ran before. Oh it's fun.
(46:46):
Yes, we need to for sure. Yeah, your podcast is coming
back and you can start doing yourpodcast again. Start doing it again.
Okay, all right, run thisworld, Run this world with Nicole the
Boom and Susie Wrigen's going to beon it. I would love to be
on your podcast. Let's do it. We tried to one time, you
were coming down to Denver and wekind of missed each other. But we'll
do it this year. Okay,deal, all right? Thanks to Cale,
(47:07):
Thank you Nicole. New episodes ofCut, Traded, Fired, Retired
I released on Tuesdays on nearly everypodcast platform. Please follow, download,
and review this podcast wherever you listento podcasts, and you can get social
and find out about new episodes onTwitter and Instagram at ctf our podcast and
check out the website ctfurpodcast dot com. To find out more about me,
(47:29):
visit Susiewarton dot com. Thanks forlistening, and until next time, please
be careful, be safe, andbe kind. Take care
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