From Financial Novice to Money Guru with Nicole Lapin, Founder of Money News Network

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I never had a resource. Even when I was going into CNBC and Bloomberg and cnn, I hired tutors. I remember because I looked at Investopedia at the time and I was like, I need a definition for the definition. Like I need a dictionary for this presumed dictionary. And so I thought, gosh, there has to be a better way. There has to be a way that the way you and I are talking right now, other people can learn about money. So there wasn't. And that's what I set out to create.

To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up. Welcome to the Speed of Culture. Today we're thrilled to be joined by Nicole Lapin, founder of the Money News Network. You may know her from being a news anchor on cnn, CNBC and Bloomberg Today. She's the host of her daily show Money Rehab and also co host of Help Want It. Nicole, so great to see you. Thanks so much for joining.

Great to see you again. Thanks Matt. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, this will be interesting because you're normally on the other side of the table, so to speak, and interviewing other people. So this will be a welcome reef where you actually get to talk about yourself and would love to just start by diving into your background. You know you came out hot out of the gate in the financial news and just general news category on tv. Like, how do you go from being an aspiring journalist to being on tv? Walk us through that story.

Oh, my gosh. So I think you and I originally met when I was at CNBC or at Bloomberg, and I started in broadcast news a million and a half years ago. Honestly, I was 18 when I needed a job, and I stopped a station chief in Chicago. I went to Northwestern at the time and wanted to work in local news, but the station chief said that they didn't have a job for me at this market in Milwaukee that I thought was going to be like, the end all, be all for my career. And they said instead. Do you know anything about business news? And you may know, I grew up in an immigrant family, so first generation American. Never learned anything about business news. Didn't work at a bank, didn't get my mba. So I was super clueless. My boyfriend in high school said he wanted to be a hedge fund manager. I thought the dude wanted to be in gardening. So being in business news was like, my biggest nightmare. But of course, course, I said, yes, absolutely. I love business news because they needed a job. And I figured out that money is just a language like anything else. We just don't have a Rosetta stone for that language growing up. Whether you learn it in your home or don't, we don't learn it at school. And so once I could speak the language, I never expected to speak it to the world, much less teach other people about it. And once I got to the business news networks during the financial crisis, I realized that there was a whole audience of my former self that I wasn't reach. We were reaching the richest, most powerful men in the country. And that's not editorialization. That's what the Nielsen ratings show. But I wanted to talk to my former self, that girl who was super scared about talking about business news, who was smiling and nodding, and her boyfriend dumped her because she didn't hang out with the Wall street guys. And I wanted to make this information accessible. I realized that there's an epidemic in financial literacy. And my mission after launching Money Rehab with Heart, I wanted to create Money News Network, which is a champion for financial literacy. And we aim to bridge the wealth gap, the wage gap, the homeownership gap, all the gaps through podcast first content.

That's an amazing story. And for you, like, in a rearview mirror, it probably like, oh, yeah, I took this step and went to that step, et cetera. But for most people, even the notion of you're graduating college, and next thing you know, you're on tv. Like, how does that happen? Because it's not like anyone could just raise their hand and have it happen. Do you remember maybe some of the initial meetings or events that took place that allowed you to kind of open up the opportunities that you would one day get?

So back in the day, 20 years ago, there was no YouTube, there was no skipping steps. I went to local news market, as you remember. This is how you did it in broadcast news. So I actually started in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in Lexington, Kentucky. You probably know, like the media market numbers for those, but they're like 100 or something, 200. I mean, teeny tiny places where the idea was you make your mistakes and then you work your way up and right, ultimately get to network news. Now, I went to Lexington, Sioux Falls, CBS stations there. Palm Springs was a CBS station. And then I interviewed and auditioned to be at cnn.

Like cold called them. When you say you went to Sioux Falls, did you just pick up the phone and say, I want to be on the news. Like, how did it work?

I sent out a VHS tape. Like I just found.

Now we're getting to what I wanted to know.

So I sent you hundreds of VHS tapes. You and I remember those very well. And back then, like, I went to Medill School of Journalism, so focused on the broadcast news track and everybody was sending out these VHS tapes with like their name written on the side. And I thought, okay, well, everybody's sending these out. I need to stand out. So my big idea for that was to get a red box. So I spent a cent more per submission where I sent my resume and then a little cover letter of some of the stories that I would do if I got the job there and this red box. And I was like, I'm going to stand out in a mountain of tapes if I have like a red box. And that actually worked. I got more calls than some of my classmates got because of that. And then when I got my first and second job, I upgraded that to like the plastic covered vhs. Do you remember, like, we had the Disney VHS tapes with the plastic covers and the insert with, you know, what was on the tape? I did that but for myself. So I created like this. Now it looks ridiculous, but I got a graphic designer. I think like a friend of a friend was a graphic designer and put my name and the contents of it. And I don't know, I just came up with like a little thing to help me stand out back in the day when.

Well, it's amazing because right now, in a world of YouTube and Canva and all these tools. It's so easy to have the tools accessible to you or back then, you know, the message in a lot of ways was the medium because you had to figure out how to stand out. Whether it be the red box or the way that you design the COVID or whatever it may be. The world's just changed. It's so much more accessible now.

So much more accessible. If my former self knew Canva, she would be even more dangerous.

Exactly. So when did you know that sort of the financial sector was your calling? So you talked about you going to news and went on these financial news networks. You quickly realized that there was an underserved demographic which was younger women. Like, when did you get that insight? And was sort of like a light bulb that went off that this is where you're going to double down.

Yeah. So when I was at these business news networks talking to old rich white men about money, again, like that is, as you know, that real.

Yeah, of course.

Watches these networks. I realized that during the financial crisis, a lot of my former classmates, a lot of my friends growing up were super scared, super confused. And of course, you know, the audience that we were reaching at the time needed to know a different set of financial information. But financial literacy was something presumably they already knew. And so once I realized that there was this white space in the market, I mean, Susie Orman at the time, if you remember, so this was over a decade ago, was the only financial expert, you know, that anyone knew. And she's amazing. And she had a very specific shtick. She had a very specific audience. She told people not to buy a latte. She told people to.

Very hard hitting, Right?

That's right. Like told people to buy a house, not to rent a house. You know, all of these things that reached a very specific audience. And I looked at it and I said, well, gosh, I now know and I can speak the language of money. And I never imagined I would be teaching other people about it. But now that I understand this, like you can buy a latte and still get your financial life together. You can rent and also still move ahead with your financial goals. And so I thought that there was a different set of advice for a different audience that was maybe not appropriate for Susie. And she had her niche. And I thought, well, if she has her niche, I think there could be other niches. And so I set out to do that. And I wrote my first book, as you know, Rich Fish, which is set out to be the bible of financial literacy that I wish I had when I was getting my own financial life together. Like, I got into my own debt. I got out of it hard way source. And even when I was going into CNBC and Bloomberg and cnn, I hired tutors. I remember because I looked at Investopedia at the time and I was like, I need a definition for the definition. Like, I need a dictionary for this presumed dictionary. And so I thought, gosh, there has to be a better way. There has to be a way that the way you and I are talking right now, other people can learn about money. So there wasn't. And that's what I set out to create.

Yeah, I think your initial book, Rich Bitch, what I loved about the title is it really kind of from afar, kind of captured your own Persona.

What you didn't read it many times.

Over, Many times, front and back, asked me anything about it. But basically, I think you tried to convey, or at least from where I sat, was like, empowerment. And yet you're still going to be able to maintain who you are and you're going to have a sense of self. And it's okay that you're in a world with all these rich older white men to speak, but it doesn't mean you can't be successful and do it your way. And I think it's a message and an overall brand that I can see why just a lot of people gravitate towards in terms of your target audience.

Thank you. Yeah. You know what I realized, Matt, at the time? This was after four book proposals for false starts, different agents. I had started a decade earlier. It took me 10 years to get my first book deal. And what I realized is that in media, as you know, you'll forget what most people will ever know about it is that you can't be all things to all people. You're nothing to anyone. And especially in media, especially in books. And so I wanted to speak to a very specific audience. And you're right, with the title, like Rich Bitch, it was either going to fail miserably or it was going to be super successful. Like, there was no gray area people were going to have feelings about a title like that. And that was the point. I actually wish there was more controversy at the time. I remember the only pushback I got was from Mika Brzezinski, who was a mentor to me when I was at NBC and I went back on her show Morning Joe, and she said, you know, listen, I really love what you're doing to teach women about money. I hate this title because I was called a bitch in a derogatory sense. And I said, so was I. But what I'm doing is I'm taking it back and owning it as a badge of honor. Because what people meant when they called me a bitch when I was rising through the media ranks really, really quickly. Never had a silver spoon in my mouth. Barely had a spoon of food in my mouth growing up. So did it the hard way. No connections, no trust fund, none of that. They meant that I was strong and powerful. And not only did I want a seat at the table, but I wanted a voice. And if that meant I was a bitch, then damn, I'm a bitch.

And I own it as a badge.

Along with so many powerful women out there. So I said to her, you know, I think the ends justify the means. If we can get a woman to pick up her money, but who never imagined she would care about money or financial literacy, then we all win. And so if I came out with a book called, like, Five Steps to Financial Freedom, Matt, it would have been dead on arrival. Like, I even looked back at some of my older book proposals. One was called Making bank, which was like, all things to all people. Fund finance. That book would have sucked. It totally would have just been dead on arrival. It didn't know who it was talking to. It tried to be like, all things to all people. And that's what I realized really quickly in media, that you don't have to be all things to all people. That you need to know who you're talking to and have those people be your biggest fans.

You've been doing this for quite a while now. What are the same mistakes, the personal financial mistakes that you see your audience make over and over again over the years? Like, what are the common themes of the advice that you're giving when you're interacting with your audience?

I think the biggest thing, as you know, is the jargon. It keeps people out of every industry. And, you know, there's jargon for all industries. Marketing has its whole other set of CPMs and God knows what. Like, I don't even know all of the acronyms, right? But every industry has that. And I think it keeps people out of the conversation because they think this is above their head. But the truth is, like, if you didn't speak Japanese and you went to Japan, you would be really confused until you spoke the language. And then you're like, duh. That was so obvious. How did I never know that? Well, you didn't learn the language. And so the same thing goes with money. I think the jargon is what keeps people who have figured out harder things in their lives out of this conversation. You and I have figured out harder things than like, dealing with fidelity to transfer, you know, a 401k to an IRA or something like that. But somehow when you say stuff like that, it's like, I mean, I know I used to break out into hives. Like my armpits would be sweating and I would be like, I have no idea what this means, but the truth is like, I just didn't understand the language. And as soon as they were like, oh, you know, we're one day. It's, it's a retirement plan. It's not an STD or whatever.

Right.

You know, it's obvious. But until you get to that point, I think that's what keeps people out of the conversation. I think it's what has increased the gender wage gap and wealth gap and all of those gaps. Because I think the language and the jargon is the thing that's most intimidating.

We'll be right back with the speed of culture after a few words from our sponsors.

Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's audience targeting you can trust. Made simple. Learn more@experian.com Adweek that's exp e R-I-A n.com Adweek yeah, and I bet with.

A lot of wealth management, there's a lot of predatory behavior too, where they take advantage of the fact that maybe younger women don't understand the language and maybe they're being charged higher fees or getting involved in the more complex financial products which they wouldn't normally need to. Right?

Yeah. And there's, you know, there's a language at every step along the way. So even when I was interviewing publicly treated CEOs at CNBC, I remember QE2 was happening at the time and one of them said to me before we went on, like, hey, because we would have guest hosts and stuff like that. So talking about different issues in the news, not just their particular industry or their sector. And they said, well, I've heard of this QE2, but like, what does it mean? I was like, oh yeah, it's a bond buyback program. They're like, oh, okay, I understand conceptually what that means from the Federal Reserve and whatnot. But like, I didn't know that it was called QE2. That was jargon that didn't come up in my industry. And I was like, that's so interesting. Even the bond guys didn't know what the equity guys were saying. It's a whole other language. Not all finance is, you know, something that every area of the financial world understands. And so even when I was writing my last book, my fourth book, this independent, I snuck in like NFTS and crypto and stuff at the time. Right. Because it continues to evolve and it continues to change. And so the language that you and I figured out as we were getting our financial lives together and rising the ranks in our careers and whatever industry you're in, you're going to learn a different set of acronyms like those continue to change. They should change. You should evolve. It should change. And so once you have a baseline, in the back of all of my books, I rewrote financial dictionaries. This is why I was single for so long, I guess, because I wouldn't rewrite financial dictionaries. But it continues to evolve and change. So. Right. Like NFTs was not something that even, you know, in the zeitgeist or even invented when I was first starting out in this. I think it's really important to have the baseline and then understand that you can learn and grow, rinse and repeat.

Absolutely. Totally makes sense. As someone who spends a lot of time in the financial world, what do you see as a state of the consumer heading into 2024? Because I can't remember a time in history where you had so many differing views of where we're headed. Because on one hand, you have record high interest rates and credit card debt, record low savings, yet the consumer is holding up pretty well in 2023. Do you have any thoughts or predictions in terms of where the economy is headed next year?

I think that, you know, what we've seen in the last year is that women have controlled the spending and the power in the households. And brands are spending so much money as, you know, marketing dollars to women to take that market share. And not enough brands, I think, are focused on helping women invest in themselves. What we've seen is that while we're making more money as women in the workforce, we have most of that in our checking accounts. And so I think what we're going to see moving forward is a big push from brands, from marketers, to take that money out of our checking accounts and start putting it into work and start investing not only in ourselves, but actually investing. And so I think that's what we're going to see in my space more so in the upcoming year.

Okay, totally makes sense. So let's switch gears a little bit as we wrap up here to the business of Nicole. So you obviously now have your own Money News Network. You're still writing books that you spoke about and seems like you're doing a million different things. You're also excellent on Snapchat and TikTok and social media, engaging your audience. So where's your focus right now with Money News Network and all your other ventures? And where do you see it all heading into the future?

Listen, Matt, I just want to say that I was on TikTok pre pandemic.

There you go. I saw you always were a trend center.

Yeah, you're the best. Thank you. When Money Rehab hit the top of the Apple podcast charts during the pandemic, I realized that there was a whole other medium that I wasn't, like, nailing, and that was the audio space. And during the pandemic, there were so many questions, and young people would get all of their information on Instagram and TikTok and whatnot. And so I saw a huge growth in our audience, and I saw this need continue to expand. And the podcast, as you know, is very intimate audience engagement. Right. Like, you could be in their ear hole. Right? That's very intimate. Like you're talking to them. And it was a space that truly, when I came up in television, I thought about visuals, right. Or like what the box looked like. I didn't think audio first. And so once Money Rehab really hit the charts and took off, I wanted to expand that into other genres of finance. I saw again the same white space I saw when I was leaving network news and getting into talking to women about financial literacy in the podcast space. We don't have a CNBC of podcasts. Now we do. It's Money News Network. And I aim to be that where we could create a slate of shows in different genres within finance. So I had personal finance. I have a show with the editor from chief of Entrepreneur magazine, Jason Pfeiffer, as you know, that focuses on career, an investing show. We have a show in English and in Spanish. That audience is really underserved. And so what I found within podcasting to create higher growth is to create a flywheel effect where you're essentially promoting and cross promoting to the same type of audience for other shows that they would want because they're already on the app. It's really hard, as you know, to go from social media or Instagram to podcasts because it's a whole other app. Like, you're not consuming it in a way that yields conversion. And so I saw that we were going away from, like, the celebrity driven podcasts that ended up charting. That was sort of no longer the formula. I think we even had shows where celebrities would come on and they would do less good as the ones that we would just answer advice for, because every celebrity then had their own podcast. And so really, we found that listeners were looking for the information and not another celebrity that they heard on 50 other podcasts. And so as the market was changing, I wanted to be on the forefront of that, of course, and create what that network would be as a CNBC of podcasting. And so that's what I did last year.

So I would imagine a big part of your job is basically figuring out what are the next verticals you want to go into. How do you keep the quality of the different podcasts as well as continuing to build your audience? Like, how does your pie chart of your day split between those things?

Well, right now, I'm primarily focused on scaling Money News Network and growing the impact that we have through champion financial literacy. And so what I spend my time thinking about is how to reach this audience who may be a new podcast listener or maybe somebody who's looking to expand the slate of podcasts that they're listening to with really targeted advice. When I was at iheart with my show at the time, I think my biggest nightmare would have been to read an FTX ad. I didn't have control over that at the time. And you know me, I really do like control, but especially around this, it's so, so important, right? Like, it's more important than if you vet a T shirt company or something else. Like, this is your financial life. And so, thankfully, I never read an FTX ad, but I didn't have control or the due diligence that I now have, where I'm able to say, no, we're only going to promote brands and companies that I care about, that I believe in. We're going to have less ads. Because I think a lot of the ads that were smushed into my show when I didn't have control became almost audio debris. I think of it as, like, audio pollution. And as I became more and more immersed in the space, I realized that that doesn't do well for the listener, the host, the brand. If you're just going to have a ton of stuff like shoved into a short episode, nobody wins. And so I wanted to rethink what that looks like and rethink the marketing and the advertising and the integrations that we were doing as a network. And then just take more care and take more due diligence. And because our audience chooses to come to us, right, like you have to hit subscribe, you have to actively and with intentionality come to me for financial advice and to all of our other hosts. And so I take that responsibility so crazy seriously. And so being able to call those shots finally was of ultimate importance to me. And I think it was the best way that I could serve this audience that I feel for so long was underserved. And now we've nailed it and we just want to continue to help them learn and grow.

That's amazing. And best of all, you're an entrepreneur and you're calling the shots and you're in control of your destiny, which is always a great thing.

Some days. Most days.

Most days. Exactly. What advice would you give 20 year old Nicole? Getting started out, trying to get the confidence, entering the world to where you are. Maybe you wish you had known then obviously you've had a great career and you're clearly just getting started. But what are some of the things maybe you wish you knew earlier in your career?

So many things. You know what's crazy is I started CNN when I was 21 years old and I had this whole complex that like, people were gonna figure out that I was so young and then one day my badge was not gonna work at the turnstile to get into the CNN center in Atlanta.

You'd be exposed, right?

I thought, like, they for sure made a mistake. I auditioned when I was 20 to launch Pipeline, which was their digital offering that was ahead of its time. And I really was so embarrassed by how young I was and damn that like my nearly 40 year old self. If I could go back and tell that girl, like, embrace your youth and understand what a attribute it is, what not a deficit it is. I wish I could just like shake her and tell her how cool that was. And ultimately she did lean into her youth and took it back instead of being scared of it. I launched this really funnily named series at CNN called Young People who Rock where I interviewed young people under 30 doing amazing things. So I started to lean into it. But there was this time where I wore shoulder pads and like teased my hair to try and look older. And I wish I could have just told her to like, enjoy that time.

I love that.

And what an asset it was.

Yeah, for sure. Is there a mantra that you like to live by finally that you wake up every morning, get you going. I'm sure you have so many. I've heard you say many on social media, but what comes to mind I.

Do love some isms. My always go to one is that it will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.

I love that. So that faith and keep pushing along, which you've clearly done.

But as you know, like as an entrepreneur, most days are not okay.

So it's true. It's true.

Yep.

You have to keep your head down and keep moving. So Nicole, thanks so much. It's great seeing you again. It's been a great interview and I can't wait for our audience to hear it. On behalf of the Susan Adwee team, thanks again to Nicole Lapin, Founder of Money News Network, bestselling author podcast host, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the Speed of Culture podcast of your favorite podcast platform. Till next time. See you soon everyone. Take care. The Speed of Culture is brought to you by Susie as part of the Adweek Podcast Network and a Guest Creator Network. You can listen subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcasts to find out more about Suzy, head to Suzy.com and make sure to search for the Speed of Culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found, click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Suzy, thanks for listening.

Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's audience targeting you can trust. Made simple. Learn more@experian.com Adweek that's experian.com Adweek.