Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Mixdorf.
Nicole, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Prior to launching my wellness company, I spent over a decade in the corporate world, working my way up the ladder in a global firm. I loved my job and was very successful, but it was intense and stressful. I was able to manage that stress for many years until my dad got sick with cancer. All of that compounded stress from my work life and home life eventually started making me physically sick. For me, the stress manifested in my digestive system and I developed a horrible condition called ulcerative colitis. When you don’t feel well, it’s impossible to give 100% of your attention or energy to anything. I did my best to cope with the health condition for a year until it degraded to the point where it started interfering with my ability to lead a meeting and do my job. I was left with no other option but to take some time off work, which my doctor had been begging me to do for months.
Once I removed myself from a big source of stress in my life and started focusing on my own self-care, the most miraculous thing happened… all my symptoms disappeared! That was when I had my aha moment and thought – “Wow, you can exercise and eat healthy, but if you have so much stress in your life, none of the rest even matters.”
I knew my story wasn’t unique, but that corporate professionals everywhere were suffering. Stress affects everyone so differently. It can manifest as digestive distress, migraine headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, weight gain, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, brain fog, and so much more. It occurred to me that the majority of professionals are already suffering from at least one of this issues and not even realizing that stress is truly the underlying culprit. That’s what inspired me to leave my corporate career behind and launch an employee wellness business. I want to help other busy professionals to create boundaries and balance in their lives so they can continue to perform at a high level in a sustainable way and thrive.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I have been through so much since I first launched my business in 2012. In these last eight years, I’ve experienced a lot of loss and grief, losing my dad to a painful battle with cancer, my father in law to a rare form of dementia, my grandpa to pneumonia, my sweet grandma to a heart attack, my cousin to cancer, and experienced three miscarriages – all while battling my own health condition that flared up after each pregnancy. Through it all, I never let any of it hold me back from experiencing joy each and every day, or from following my dreams. Mindset is everything. I have a remarkable ability to surrender to what is, finding peace in acceptance and opportunities within my challenges. Every situation has the ability to be a gift if we simply ask ourselves what we can learn from it, how we can grow, and how we can make ourselves better for having experienced it.
After my daughter was born in 2018, I became extremely ill from a flare of colitis that would not respond to traditional western treatments and was completely debilitating. This is while I was taking care of a newborn baby and a rambunctious four year old boy and running a growing business. I embarked on an incredible healing journey to heal my body naturally and do what my doctors said couldn’t be done. This journey took me to over 13 specialists and healers, and cost me over $24,000 out of my own pocket, above and beyond what insurance covered. I worked with an integrative GI doctor, an IBD specialist, a naturopathic doctor, a nutritionist, two different acupuncturists, a reiki healer, two different energy healers, a light healer, a medical intuitive doctor, and ultimately, an ayurvedic doctor and a Chinese divine healer that truly healed me. I witnessed incredible miracles that are hard to describe with words, and am happy to say that I succeeded in completely healing my body and ridding myself of this condition, which has left me healthier and stronger than I’ve been in years!!! That happened at the end of 2019, so I went into 2020 pumped up and excited for all there was to come!
2020 has been an interesting year, to say the least! At the beginning of the year, California passed a new law called AB5 that reclassified independent contractors as employees. I had a team of 25 independent contractors working for me in California that suddenly had to be converted to employees. I only found out about the new law the last week of January, giving me only one week to figure out what to do! I got on the phone with every business attorney and CPA I knew. I even called the EDD. It was unbelievable how much conflicting information I was given. Additionally, I had to research several payroll servicing companies and get workers comp quotes from insurance companies. Ultimately, I made the executive decision to switch everyone over, and overnight I became a company with over 20 employees. While all of my other entrepreneur friends were freaking out about it, I decided not to worry about the additional costs. I had been preparing for significant growth of my business this year, so I decided to look at it as setting up the operational foundation to support my vision.
Six weeks later, the COVID-19 health pandemic hit. Every single one of my corporate clients called me and canceled all of their onsite wellness events, as they sent their employees to work from home. My company literally came to a screeching halt overnight. Instead of panicking, I meditated on it, asking myself what message I was supposed to receive. The next day, I got inspired to go online. So I got busy and took my entire company online in a mere 30 days! We started live streaming all of our fitness classes, cooking demos, and meditation classes, and I started leading weekly inspirational wellness talks to guide my clients through this crisis, covering topics such as building emotional resiliency, breaking through fear, embracing change, stress reduction strategies, creating boundaries working from home, etc. Then one of my clients asked for a place where we could host all of this online wellness content, so I took immediate action and built a beautiful members-only web portal where employees could watch live-streamed classes, on-demand fitness videos, guided meditations, and download healthy recipes. It’s been a huge success! Our engagement went up by 200% for some of our clients!
I know that I was meant to go through each and every one of those situations in my life. They have made me stronger, more compassionate, and a greater healer. The wisdom I’ve gained along the way is immeasurable, and I’m right where I am meant to be. Life is full of ups and downs, but the most important part is focusing on the beauty around me so I can enjoy the journey.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Balance by Nature an award-winning employee wellness company that designs, implements, and manages customized wellness programs for companies of all sizes. We help our corporate clients create cultures of health that support the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of their employees. We offer curated wellness experiences for fitness, nutrition, stress reduction, personal development and team building that can be delivered online or in-person.
Since employees can no longer go to the gym, we’ve created a virtual gym hosted in a beautiful online portal to bring live streamed fitness classes to them, including Yoga, Zumba, Boot Camp, Bollywood Dance, Qigong, Cardio Hip Hop, and more! We are also live streaming our stress reduction classes including Meditation, Mindfulness, Positive Mindset, Sound Bath Therapy, EFT Tapping, and Emotional Balance Workshops. Our nutritionists are leading Healthy Cooking Demonstrations, Nutrition Presentations and Personal Coaching sessions online. Additionally, I am leading weekly Inspirational Wellness Talks on topics to guide my clients through this crisis and beyond.
The purpose of employee wellness is to support a culture of health, collaboration, and innovation, improving employee output, health outcomes, and job satisfaction. We achieve this company-wide transformation for our clients by approaching wellness and well-being from the perspective of both individual and collective behavioral change to yield greater results aligned with the company’s values and vision. Leadership support from all levels of the organization is essential, as the cultural shift we are driving becomes interwoven into our client’s business operations.
Balance by Nature has recently been awarded as a Top 10 Employee Wellness Company in the USA for the 2nd year in a row by HR Tech Outlook Magazine. I personally have been awarded as a Top 100 Healthcare Leader in the World 2020 by the International Forum on Advancements in Healthcare and was also awarded the title of Most Influential Woman in Corporate Wellness Services USA 2020 by Acquisition INTL Magazine as part of their 2020 Global Excellence Awards. I guess you can say that some great things have come out of this year!
What were you like growing up?
I was always an adventurous kid who loved nature. You could usually find me sitting in a tree or doing cartwheels in the grass. I am a life long environmentalist, with a big heart for animals and the planet. I’ve been donating a portion of my income to organizations like World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace since I was 14 years old!
I spent a year abroad in Spain as a 5th-year student from UCLA, working on a Spanish minor while traveling to over 40 different cities. That experience completely changed my life, instilling in me a curiosity to learn about new cultures and people, and the confidence to believe that I can do and accomplish anything that I set my heart on.
I have always been a positive person with a constant smile on my face. I decided a long time ago that life is best when I feel happy. I now measure my success based on how much fun I’m having. One of my favorite quotes and daily mantras from Gabrielle Bernstein is “It is GOOD to FEEL GOOD.” Life is too short to spend time worrying about things beyond my control. I believe it is our birthright as humans to be happy, so I allow happiness to be my guide. When faced with difficult decisions, I usually pick the answer that FEELS the best. When opportunities present themselves to me, I always say yes if they make me feel excited, even if the path to achieving it doesn’t appear clear right away. I trust my intuition to lead me in the right direction and know that everything will work out when I take inspired action. It always does!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.balancebynature.com
- Phone: 818-456-9868
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @nicolemixdorf
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/balance.by.nature.wellness
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolemixdorf/
Image Credit:
Mitchell Manz Photography
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