The Women In Fitness Association (W.I.F.A.) - Lindsey Rainwater

So if you wanna like pick that lane, if you wanna be in the business of helping women postpartum, then be really extremely great at that and go after it. But don't try to be available to like mothers postpartum and then you know women in general and then active aging, older adults.

Like don't try to do all that. Just help women that are postpartum and be really freaking good at it.

Hey Fitness fans, welcome back to the Future Fitness podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Balzan. Going up to number 61. And I have a great pleasure of talking to Lindsay Rainwater. She is the CEO and founder of Lee Fa, that is W I F A. It stands for the Women in Fitness Association. And it's a fairly new organization. Um and it's growing fast and for really good reason. And uh I'll tell you a lot more about it here in a second. So before I do, I just want to make you aware uh we are starting a new podcast series in addition to this one, it's called Fitness Web. And it's a short format of you know, 10 to 15 minutes per interview. And what we want to do is really help fitness professionals who don't have a lot of exposure from PR to media uh to get some. So uh if you're sitting there and you think, God, I'd like to be on a podcast, uh, this is the one, uh reach out to me personally, Eric at fitnessprofessionalonline.com, and uh we'll get you hooked up, we'll get you on the show. And uh I'd love to meet you. So go do that. Uh more about Lindsay. She's been in the fitness industry for a long time. Um during a conference uh at IRSA, she started seeing the need uh for a women's organization like this to help women identify opportunities within the fitness industry and then give them resources to achieve that. And uh it's really cool. Of course, you know, um all the uh the groundswell that's taking place right now um as of May 9th, 2018, um for women's empowerment and women's growth, especially professionally, is really cool, and uh they are a central part of this within the fitness industry specifically. So um without further ado, this is Lindsay Rainwater, and this is episode number 61. Enjoy it. Hey fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. I'm Eric Malzone and I am with Lindsay Rainwater. Lindsay, welcome to the show.

Hello, thanks for having me, Eric.

So I I'm really excited for today. I I've um obviously in the in the past 12 months, uh you know, the the women's movement is is really uh starting to go downhill, right? I mean not downhill, but it's it's it's getting steam and it's building and uh it's it's really it's an exciting thing to see, you know. Um I have a mom, a sister, and and my wife, of course, and a lot of women in my life. So I'm really excited to see this. So I'm um this topic is is is great. It's great timing. Uh before we get into WIFA and what you're doing there, give us some background on who you are and what you do and and uh how you got to where you are now.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me again. And as far as uh background, I've been in the fitness industry for a very long time. I grew up a child athlete figure skating and um was an athlete in high school. So I like to think I've been with this industry for a really long time. But professionally in my 20s and 30s, and in high school, I worked in health clubs and YMCAs and um for women's only clubs. And so for me, I um, you know, my background has led me to the point that it has today, and what I'm currently doing just feels like a culmination of everything that I've ever done, and it's the opportunity to really help support women in a way that I've always wanted to be supported. I mean, everything that the association is currently doing are things that I've always wanted, and so um, and it seems to be working out well. So that's really exciting too. And um, forgive me to have to ask again, but as far as my background, was there anything specific that you wanted me to highlight or chat about?

Yeah, I mean, you had a really interesting story too about um, I mean, you've worked with Ursa, right? Been working with them for a while. Give us some background on that.

Um, well, as far as URSA and not working with them in in the context of I've been going to that trade show and conference uh for many years. And last year I was fortunate enough to be recognized as one of Ursa's rising stars. So a colleague had recognized me and said, look out for this one, um, and given me that recognition, which was really cool. And then I've also participated um in the ILC group, which is a very exciting group of people that are um working with Congress to try to get exercise recognized from an insurance standpoint and other aspects to be seen as a prevention tool. Um, you know, and I have the way I've always described the URSA trade show and convention is one giant family reunion. So whether I've attended the show as a vendor, which was the case for many years, or the last three years, um, this being the third, I've gotten a chance to be there representing myself and the clients that I'm consulting with. And then this year, WEFA and the Women and Fitness Association is an associate member of URSA as well. So it's just a great place to be able to connect with peers. Um, there's of course club industry and other trade shows that meet both globally and national, you know, and domestically, but that show in particular has been a really fun one to attend year after year because of the collaborative opportunities that are there. And I think last year when I attended, um, I attended the Women in Leadership Summit. So Ursa does a really great job every year of putting on an event for the last, I believe this is the ninth year. Um, they do an event where women from all over the industry can gather and spend about three hours talking about a given topic and connecting and networking. And you know, I left that event this last year saying that was so awesome. I would really love to be a part of a group that does that all the time. And hence WIFA was born.

Awesome. Yeah, and you've seen um, I'm not gonna say surprising, but I think you you may have been a little bit surprised by how fast it's grown, right?

Yeah, I I really, you know, I think that the what's the tagline that's getting? It's the year of the woman. I think some people have said I've like, it's been um the year of the woman for me. I'm 34 for 34 years. So um I didn't know that we were gonna all of a sudden be, you know, talking about it in that context. I didn't know that when um I decided to launch the association. I think it's really not so much about it's about women, but it's about helping people, period. And it's not anti-men or anti-any, it's just pro-people and specifically women and helping them. Because my experience has been that my mentors have always been men and they've been great, but I haven't had access or known how to approach women in that same way, like the just the positions of female CEOs or females in leadership. If I want to accelerate my career, what women do I have access to talk to? And so I think, you know, I didn't know when we launched that it was gonna be such a consistent um desire for so many women. What I saw right out of the gate was that many of my colleagues and friends in the fitness industry were like, yes, thank you. Where has this been for however many years? And we saw membership really hockey stick right away. And then just in this last two months of 2018 grow exponentially. We were averaging um anywhere from you know 30 members our first month, and then kind of like the 10, 15, like we were seeing, and we've consistently had over a member per day since the beginning of 2018. So it's been you know a pretty consistent growth.

Yeah, that's incredible. And congratulations. That's that's huge. I um would you say that the the fitness industry is is uh is heavy on the male side?

It's a pretty generalized statement. I'll let me qualify what I think it looks like. Um there's there's a ton of women in fitness. So if you go to a health club, um if you walk into your 24-hour fitness or you know, even a YMCA, you're gonna see a ton of women teaching group fitness classes. You're gonna see a ton of women teaching, um, you know, facilitating personal training, private Pilates, private yoga classes, um, group yoga classes, you probably are gonna see a woman at the front desk. You're probably gonna see women in child care. So the clubs um are full of women. But when it comes to who's in charge, it's mostly men. When it comes to who opens clubs, it's mostly men. When it comes to the C-suites and executive suites of the um the vendors and the people making the equipment, the people making the supplies that the clubs use, mostly men. So what I want to bring a focus to is creating opportunities for people that want those roles to find a way to be able to be at the boardroom table and to be part of that discussion. The association is fortunate enough that we have seven women on our board of directors that fill those types of positions, but there's, you know, there we want those numbers to be large in the future so that if if somebody wants to be CEO, that they're given the opportunity and the tools to do so. And I think it's just gonna take time to create accessibility to those roles. It's not that they they currently have been filled by men in the past, and I think it's just gonna be a natural progression of time to where those, you know, positions become available to women. Um, and I don't think it's an issue that they aren't right now per se. I think it's knowing how who those people are that are capable of filling those roles and then giving them the opportunities.

Oh, yeah, that's great. I um from what what do you think are the challenges? Like what when you're talking, I'm sure you talk to a lot of women in the industry, but what what are the biggest challenges that they face on a day-to-day basis with getting it to a higher level if they want it, right? What do you think those challenges are or what do you know they challenges are?

Yeah. So I think part of it is knowing what opportunities are out there. So if you're a group fitness instructor that works inside of a health club that makes $35 every time you teach a class, it's kind of hard if that's the bubble you operate in to know what other positions are available outside of your club. So maybe within your club, you think to yourself, well, if I'm a high performing instructor, I want to be in charge of all the instructors one day. I want to be a group fitness manager. And then maybe beyond that, you're like, I want to be in charge of this whole club. And maybe that's your scope. When in reality, you could do that for that club that you worked at, or there's the people that created the classes that you teach. So Les Mills International, you know, some of these brands that actually create these programs where you could also work for a company like that and make quite a bit more financially on an annual, you know, basis, having a professional career within one of the service providers. So my experience is that, you know, a lot of people that work inside clubs don't know the capacity of all the different ways that they could be in the industry. And with a small amount of capital, they could open an Anytime Fitness or an Orange Theory or you know, be involved in a franchise situation. So I think it's what I love about WIFA is that it's attracted all of those people. So we have women that are teaching classes, we have women that are running facilities, we have women that are in management, and then we also have women that are you know just teaching one yoga class a week. And so being able to expose people to all those different ways that you can be in the fitness industry, I think is important, that access.

Lindsay, do you think that um maybe the like the the entrepreneurialism of fitness nowadays with the online you know possibilities, do you think that's you know, for lack of better term, leveling the planning field a little bit, or do you do you still see some challenges in you know in in that arena as well?

I think it's both. I think if you're you know, there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, I think. I talked to some of my mentors that are in their 50s, and if you think about the 80s and even the 70s, you know, what tools you actually had access to, there was no such thing as having a virtual business then, right? Like in a lot of ways. So, in that respect, there's tremendous opportunity because you can, you know, I would not have been able to launch WIFA the way that I have in 1984, it couldn't have existed. But because of the resources we have today in technology, it can. So I think in one respect, there's a tremendous amount of you know, opportunity, but in the same respect, it's extremely noisy. So if you're trying to become a personal trainer and develop a brand for yourself on Instagram and then create virtual training tools that are for download and then direct people to your website, you've got to have a very strong way that you're gonna be managing that and putting that out there or an existing following that you can transition online because it's very noisy. So you've got to be able to differentiate yourself and do something that's different than your fellow that's already out there doing that. Um, because it's a noisy space. So I think it's both.

Yeah. Yeah. I when we talked uh a few weeks ago before the recording, I you you had a term that really resonated with me was that there's a tsunami of content.

Yeah, I can't take credit for that one. My friend Brian or work, I think, probably said that first, but I agree entirely. Like it's just this tidal wave of like turn on your TV, Google it, search for it on Instagram. It's like it's not hard to find at all.

Right. And you had some advice too. You had some really valuable advice. And I think it's a drum that we we beat quite often over here with our company. But um, you know, how how to start differentiating. Um, what advice do you have for people in in that in that sphere?

I think you have to pick a lane and then you gotta drive real fast and be really focused. So I think if you're trying to be all things all people, good luck. But if you can hone in on your audience, like I think when you and I were talking about it, I'm trying to remember what I even said, but you know, I'm an I'm a new-ish mom. I have an eight-month-old son. And so when it was time for me to like ramp up my fitness again, I know certain things, I know what works for me, but I also wanted to see what was out there for moms postpartum. And so trying to just search for that hashtag on Instagram was a bit of a nightmare. And then you've got this like huge assortment of things that the mainstream fitness consumer is gonna call great. Whereas if you've worked out for a long time, you might not think it's as great. But at the same time, you're dealing with like new questions like how long am I supposed to wait before I do crunches again? I don't actually know. I should Google that. Little things like that that you I've never even really thought of before because I've just always been active. Um so if you want to like pick that lane, if you want to be in the business of helping women postpartum, then be really extremely great at that and go after it. But don't try to be available to like mothers postpartum and then you know, women in general, and then active aging, older adults. Like, don't try to do all that. Just help women that are postpartum and be really freaking good at it.

Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, it's interesting, I I cut a video for a group yesterday because uh we started talking about how to like how to identify those types of opportunities. And I used that example in in the keyword analysis research that we did. And you know, just I just out of curiosity, you know, it was funny because I looked at like, okay, postpartum fat loss, right? No searches whatsoever in the last month. And then I changed the word to just postpartum fat loss and or weight loss, and all of a sudden it was like thousands of searches. And I was like, God, what a great niche, right? I hope somebody actually watches this and like just picks that up and runs with it because it's uh it's a great idea. And there's you know, there's there's unlimited amount of niches that you can get into nowadays. So I think that's a really powerful message.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So what do you see uh for RIFA? What do you see coming down the pipe? Where where do you see your the the organization expanding? Um, what what do you think is gonna happen the next two years?

Oh my goodness, tears is a big window. Well, I can tell you what I think will happen in the near future. You know, I think our our momentum is about to flywheel in a lot of respects. Um you know, that you referenced it at the beginning of our call, kind of the the downhill, that flywheel effect. If you've ever read the book Good to Great, um, you know, that uphill, like, you know, pushing something very, very heavy uphill, and then it like starts to go over the hill and just flywheels. And I think what is happening right now is there's a global movement, obviously, around you know, positioning women for opportunities and giving them the chance to do things that they might not have done before. But I think more importantly, what's happening is that fitness is an o there is an opportunity to use fitness as prevention when it comes to a lot of the epidemics we see globally relative to health. And so, regardless of how you think about that, what you think about that, there's going to be a need for more leaders than there's ever been before. Period. Women, men, like we we need leaders to be able to facilitate the opportunities that are out there. So I think what's gonna happen is that the business acumen necessary to be in leadership roles, training in regards to that will be necessary. And so I like to think that WEFA is gonna be a part of that, and how that shows up and what that looks like is yet to be told as far as the story. But I know what I can say is you know, we have quarterly virtual meetings, we have in-person events as well, and we're gonna keep delivering on those things in a really substantial and meaningful way. And I think we're gonna start generating some of those leaders necessary to fill those necessary positions to have exercise be a prevention tool to make our better, our world a better place.

Yeah, I love it. And so give us some more insight because now I'm I'm curious. You know, you mentioned quarterly meetings and things like that. What are some of the other granular aspects that people get uh when they join WIFA? And is there is there membership dues or is there anything like that? How's that how's that all work?

Yeah, great questions. So, right now, the way it's set up is there's an executive path, which would be for an individual. So let's say for myself, if I wanted to join WIFA, it would be currently it's $99 a year. And what I get with that is four virtual member only meetings. Um, currently there's one live meeting, which is going to be happening next week at Ursa Thursday night in San Diego. Okay. So we have our first inaugural live event um next week, actually. And then there are um kind of bonus webinars that happen once a month on various topics. We also have a content platform that lives on our website, so anyone that's a member has the opportunity to publish to that, which is also a benefit. Um, and then the mentorship program. And the mentorship program is an opt-in program where myself and another woman or whoever, you know, that executive member gets paired with another member. And during the course of that quarter, that meeting content that comes out of that meeting. So, for instance, our last meeting was about opening your own business. And by the way, all of our meetings are crowdsourced topics, so our members vote on what they want to hear about from us.

Yeah.

So we we brought in three powerhouse women that have opened businesses for over 30 years. They spoke to our members, provided some extremely robust tools, and then the intention is for the next three months, the two members that are paired in the mentorship program will speak about that topic, opening your own business, and they will meet and mentor each other for the course of that three months. So, in the course of your four, your 12-month calendar year that you have a membership with LIFA that hopefully you're renewing annually, you get four intimate introductions made in addition to having access to the entire community. So that's a huge member of benefits. That's kind of the executive pathway. There's also corporate sponsorships where a um a health club, a business within the industry, anyone that has women that work in their company that they also want to be able to join WIFA as an organization, so not just an individual. So for instance, Midtown Health and the Chicago area is a member, they have multiple facilities and they have multiple women working for them. So they have um 10 plus women that have joined as an associate member, but they also have sponsorship rights because they've come in as a sponsor. So they get to have their logo on our printed materials, have their logo in the backdrop of our virtual meetings, and then give away some swag at our live events. So they get the benefit of advertising, but they also get their um executive memberships. And then we have a straight partnership path where you can um donate to what WEFA is up to and have your money go towards advertising to our members. So those are the kind of the three different pathways, and that's all on the website.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, thank you for explaining that. That that helps quite a bit, especially for my understanding. So, what about what about you? What about you, Lindsay? What's what's up for the next year, next few years for you? What do you see your future look like?

Goodness. Well, besides um raising a man, so I have an eight-month-old son and um my husband I have pictures right behind it, my husband and um my son and I, and our our lovely Labrador. So we've got that going on. Um, in addition to that, you know, I'd like to think that WEFA is just gonna continue to grow, and I'm gonna get the chance to grow that organization and association to um its fullest potential. I also do consulting work um with quite a few companies in our organiz in our um industry, and I I really love helping with um strategy work, advising a lot of business development and sales solutions, and then I speak and I write as well. So I'll keep doing that and um any opportunity that I'm fortunate enough to have, I'm gonna do to my fullest ability.

Awesome. And where do people find you? What's the best place for people to find you?

So on my website, so lindzyrainh20.com is a great place to find me. There's also links to me um from the WIFA website. So if you're at the women in fitness association.org, um you can find my profile linked up in there. And if you Google my name, there's quite a few things that you can find as well. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, the Lindsay RainH2O is my handle on pretty much every platform.

Okay, awesome. And just for people listening, it's W-I-F-A. I know we're saying WIFA all the time.

I never Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, W-I-F-A.

Yep.

Cool.

Well, uh oh, not a zero.

Okay, cool. And uh yeah, so I I uh thank you. Thank you for coming on the show and and thank you for for doing what you're doing uh within the industry. I I think uh, you know, hopefully we can make the fitness industry kind of a gold standard. That would be great, right? That'd be awesome.

I agree.

Cool. Well, um, everybody, this is Lindsay Rainwater. Uh thanks again, Lindsay, for coming on. She is with WIFA, uh W I F A, and uh she also does consulting and all that. So that's it, that's it for this episode, you guys. Thanks for listening, and we'll be talking to you soon. Thanks, Lindsay.

Thanks, Eric.

Hey Fitness fans, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Melzone, and I want to personally thank you for your support and listening to the future of fitness podcast and interview series. If you have a few minutes, I would greatly appreciate it if you went to iTunes and gave us a favorable rating. Uh, as well as go to our YouTube channel and subscribe there. That'd be fantastic. If you know of anybody who'd be a great fit for the show as a guest, please hit me up at Eric at fitnessmarketingalliance.com. That's Eric WC. Also, I have three questions for you. Number one, are you a fitness professional who's been in the industry for over seven years? Question number two, do you have an online revenue stream or multiple online revenue streams? Question number three, are you ready to break loose from your local market and take advantage of all of the opportunity out there in the online world? If you are, I want you to go to fitnessmarketingalliance.com forward slash mastermind. This will lead you to our level up mastermind group and all the information that you need to know. This is a group for high level thinkers within the industry who are ready to break free. So go check it out. It's fitnessmarketingalliance.com forward slash mastermind. Let us know if you have any questions. Thank you again for listening. I greatly appreciate your support. We'll keep it up from our end as well.