Posts in marketing

Aspire Higher Podcast

I was fortunate to get to sit down with Dave Glaser, founder of Fit Life Champions and talk about all the things, purpose, my current projects, how I started in the fitness industry and so much more! Click play below and listen while you’re working today.

Towards the end of the podcast I share about my newest project, the C3 Program , our next launch date is November 6, 2018, click here to learn more: https://www.lindseyrainh2o.com/c3-squad/ .

Thank you Dave for the opportunity to chat with you. Dave is an incredible business leader in the Fitness world virtually and in the Denver area, click here to learn about his business, and if you are a person wanting accountability and support in your fitness training, he is pure magic! Thank you again for the opportunity, Dave. Enjoy the podcast and if you’d like to get in touch with me, click here.

Lindsey Rainwater, also known as Lindsey RainH2O, is a sought-after business advisor, Founder, writer & keynote speaker to the fitness and wellness industry. For more information about Rainwater, follow her on Twitter @LindseyRainH2o

Business, Emotional Intelligence, Female Leadership, Fitness , Fitness Technology, Leadership, lifestyle design, marketing, Mothers that Blog, Personal Branding, WIFALindsey RainwaterOctober 25, 2018women in leadership, Women In Leadership, podcast, aspire higher, Lindsey RainwaterComment

You Don't Know What You Don't Know.

Hello Blog, I've missed you.

Twelve weeks ago my husband and I welcomed to the world our first born son, Oliver Brysen. I have paused my writing to turn my whole attention towards Mr Oliver and the best way I can think of starting my blog up again is to share with you my experience of transitioning into motherhood.

You can learn a lot about a person by looking at their most frequently used emojis. Face palm, baby, heart and poop are all highly relevant ways to describe my life via images.

Reflecting on the past 12 weeks and my experience of labor and delivery, the underscored theme for me is this: I simply didn't know what I didn’t know. I have come to realize that no level of preparation, reading, even babysitting can prepare one for the transformation that occurs when having a child.

Looking back on my last few weeks pregnant I felt prepared, I thought I had a plan, I thought through every last detail around organizing my life to prepare for Oliver's arrival. What actually happened? Nothing can prepare even the most prepared person for what having a child does to change you.

Lindsey and Oliver One day old, July 22, 2017

I was having a conversation with one of my dear friends a few weeks ago and he said to me "yeah, you give a shit which makes it that much harder", how simple and complex is that statement and yet it summarizes my entire world view.

I care, a lot, and am very thoughtful and purposeful about how I do everything and is therefore making my adjustment to motherhood a grand adventure. I knew going into this transition that what I was looking forward to the most besides the incredible fact of having a baby was the transformational playground it would be: I had no idea how deep that would go.

My experience was of an intense journey in rediscovering myself in a new way. I have always loved my work, my relationships and generally how I show up in the world and have done a tremendous amount of work around self discovery to really know myself intimately. I’ve always known myself to have my to do list buttoned up at the end of each day, all emails read and responded to, notifications cleared, exercise done, house clean... this is no longer my life :) I’ve never had more days in a row where “getting to it later” is the theme.

Priority’s shift, right fellow Mums? Do the dishes or feed my newborn? Oliver wins every time!

Lindsey and Oliver, Over 5 weeks old, Photo Cred. From the Hip, Nina

For the structured control freak that I’ve always been, what a shake up! Not to mention the physical changes, little sleep, hormone roller coasters, postpartum depression and a deep love that becomes the new compass for everything. Woah.

One of my favorite mentors uses the phrase "insight follows experience" Thank you Kathlyn Hendricks for this simple yet all knowing phrase.

I chose to share with you these humble facts as a way of tipping my hat to all the mothers that do this dance everyday. The dance of doing their work, loving their spouse, loving their children and managing to put on mascara and smile while at it all!

The best thing is that time is truly magical, it really does heal and teach us. Over the last 12 weeks time has taught me how to begin working again, getting more done in a day, caring for my needs to be a better business owner, wife and mother. It has not been an overnight switch flip like I thought I could prepare for, but it has been my life’s greatest teaching so far.

Thank you Oliver, my sweet Son for co-facilitating the most transformational experience of my life. I am the luckiest mother alive to get to be your mama, thank you for choosing me!

Lindsey, Jeremy and Oliver, Oliver 5 weeks old, Photo Cred. From the Hip

Lindsey Rainwater, also known as Lindsey RainH2O, is a sought-after business advisor, Founder, writer & keynote speaker to the fitness and wellness industry. For more information about Rainwater, follow her on Twitter@LindseyRainH2O

Plan to Succeed, How to Create a Goal and Accomplish It!

Photo Credit: From the Hip, Photo of Lindsey and Jeremy Rainwater

I have officially created my blueprint for 2017 and I feel excited to share my process with you! I have followed this process for multiple years now and I can tell you that it works for me. I set the intention and then accomplish exactly what I set out to do and that feels really good! My husband and I (photo above) give ourselves at least half of a day to spread out and create both individual and collaborative items for both of us. I will say that in my experience, especially with the purchase of our new home together, it is important to not only set your intentions, but also to revisit your goals on regular basis. We spent time every month reviewing our goals and results, which gave us insight on how we needed to adjust our plan along the way, which ultimately brought us to our North Star Goals. It has been my experience that although creating the plan is GREAT, it is only half of the battle and having a way to review that plan on a regular basis is the true magic behind the art of completing what you set out to do.

Here are my three steps to creating intentions and actions for what I want to create over a twelve month period.

Visualize! Then Write it Down

I really enjoy starting the process by imagining and visualizing where I want to go by viewing it on a calendar and also writing it out in a word cloud format. Start with a large piece of paper and write down all the things big and small that you wish to accomplish. It will look messy, it will look crazy disorganized and that is the point! Let your creativity put everything down on paper you could possibly imagine accomplishing over the course of the time you are planning for. Once you've brainstormed to the point of not being able to think of anything else, walk away, clear your mind for a bit and then come back to complete. I find this exercise to be both liberating and fun because you can write anything down, you've not committed to anything yet, only brainstorming.

Make a list, Check it Twice

Now that all your creative flow is out on paper and also might look super messy to you (all good), it's time to make some sense of it! Begin by extracting the themes and creating a list. If you see on your word cloud "write book" then that would go on the list, or "family vacation" then put it on the list. Some of the items on your word cloud might not make it on the list and that's okay. The word cloud is the brainstorm this is the practical part, what do you actually want to accomplish this year? Of what is on your word cloud what do you actually want to do and what has a serge of excitement to you? Once you have a well formed list it's time to create a plan!

Calendar Calendar Calendar

If it's not on the calendar it doesn't exist! Once you've created your list, you must create action and intention. A plan to literally accomplish the exciting objectives you've created for yourself. The way I do this is to put down first what is literally time sensitive. The conference that I plan on attending, the wedding that's a destination event that I want to also make a vacation. Those are items that are set in stone on your calendar because they are literal dates. Everything else on your list goes into your calendar as a project relative to when you want to accomplish it, or are being asked to complete. If you want to actually start creating a blog or writing a book you have to plan time for yourself to actually do that, time for the deep work outside of meetings and other work. The other thing you might do is create a to do list from these items that is per month. In past years I've created a list for every month of major action steps affiliated with my projects so that way no matter what's going on, I have a very accurate to do list that captures my large "Northstar" goals.

The wonderful thing about having a to do list in the calendar that reflects your yearly initiatives is that no matter what happens you have a path. No matter what's going on in your life you have certain things that you've decided to do no matter what, and personally I find this to be a beautiful thing.

I'd love to hear your process of planning, share your ideas and ways you plan to succeed!

Send me a note

Lindsey Rainwater, also known as Lindsey RainH2O, is a sought-after business consultant, leadership coach, writer and presenter to the fitness and wellness industry. For more information about Rainwater, follow her on Twitter @LindseyRainH2O

The Art of Knowing When To Stop instead of Start

One of my all time favorite leadership books is Good to Great by James Collins, I remember being in my early 20's and reading the book for the first time, it has remained a resource for me for over a decade. During my last read through the book, a concept stuck out to me that I had not really noticed before. Now I am sure it was because I was not ready to see the message, funny how life works that way, when the student is ready the teacher appears. The book centers around many wonderful topics, and the principle I want to share with you today is the art of the "stop, doing list". Isn't it intuitive for us to create a "to do list" that informs our actions throughout the day, of course! Collins suggest that we consider what to stop doing to really allow for true and dynamic discipline.

I love his thoughts he noted down on the topic found on his blog, jimcollins.com.

Each time the New Year rolls around and I sit down to do my annual resolutions, I reflect back to a lesson taught me by a remarkable teacher. In my mid-20s, I took a course on creativity and innovation from Rochelle Myers and Michael Ray at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and I kept in touch with them after I graduated.
One day, Rochelle pointed to my ferocious work pace and said, "I notice, Jim, that you are a rather undisciplined person."
I was stunned and confused. After all, I was the type of person who carefully laid out my BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals), top three objectives and priority activities at the start of each New Year. I prided myself on the ability to work relentlessly toward those objectives, applying the energy I'd inherited from my prairie- stock grandmother.
"Your genetic energy level enables your lack of discipline," Rochelle continued. "Instead of leading a disciplined life, you lead a busy life."
She then gave me what I came to call the 20-10 assignment. It goes like this: Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone call tells you that you have inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second tells you that you have an incurable and terminal disease, and you have no more than 10 years to live. What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?
That assignment became a turning point in my life, and the "stop doing" list became an enduring cornerstone of my annual New Year resolutions — a mechanism for disciplined thought about how to allocate the most precious of all resources: time.
Rochelle's challenge forced me to see that I'd been plenty energetic, but on the wrong things. Indeed, I was on entirely the wrong path. After graduate school, I'd taken a job at Hewlett- Packard. I loved the company, but hated the job. Rochelle's assignment helped me to see I was cut out to be a professor, a researcher, a teacher — not a businessman — and I needed to make a right-angle turn. I had to stop doing my career, so that I could find my real work. I quit HP, migrated to the Stanford Business School faculty and eventually became — with some remarkable good luck along the way — a self-employed professor, happily toiling away on my research and writing. -Jim Collins
Article can be found on Jim's Blog, Click here to see full article

Often when we create a new plan to ignite change, that plan is often coupled with initiates and tasks to set us on the new path and direction. In pausing to reflect about other possibilities, one suggestion that Mr Collins makes is that of evaluating what can potentially be stopped instead of started. Making the choice and having the discipline to stop is a high level demonstration of self awareness and discipline. Like he talks about in the article, busy can be a state we find ourselves in and without the proper discipline, can end up not accomplishing a whole lot even if we feel like we are and instead we are delusional to the reality we have created.

As you create plans for next year, business and your own new year goals, consider what you could stop doing instead of adding in more new initiatives. Ask yourself the 20-10 rule that collins mentions, what would you do differently?

The hardest part of change is having the motivation and discipline to sustain the change, and a large force can be a person to support that process. Reach out to me, I love to support people amidst change and would enjoy hearing about your plan and how it is going. Send me a note below, and let's talk about what you are going to STOP doing.