#129 - Self-Care Habits for Stress with Lindy Nowak

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Lindy Nowak about her morning routine, finding a service you can offer that people need, self-care habits for stress, love and happiness and more.

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Announcer  

Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan

Hey, Lindy, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?

Lindy  

Hi, Ryan. I am great. Thank you so much for having me.

Ryan  

I know you're great. This is audio only. But I saw your beautiful background of Miami Beach with the water. So it looks very beautiful. So probably hard to have a bad day with that view.

Lindy  

Yes. And it's hard to have a bad day in December when it's 80 degrees. Yeah,

Ryan  

it's half of that here in New Jersey. So Oh, well. Alright, let's kick off with telling everyone you know, my morning, my audience of morning upgraders, who you are, what you do for a living, and then something you're grateful for right now.

Lindy  

So I am the founder and owner of a company called Up in day websites. And we build turnkey websites for small business owners and entrepreneurs quickly with a process that I set up that requires very little effort from them. It's literally a website solution for people who are struggling to get a really great marketing-driven website up for their business. And up in a website that is completely done. And it's beautiful. And the whole back end is ready to go. So I created this company. Let's see, this is my as we're in year three, and it has been going really well and super fun. You meet a lot of people. And I would say the one thing that I am most grateful for. I'm grateful for a lot. I would have to say living in a city that I have always loved growing up and being able to live here and survive here and start a tech company.

Ryan  

It's neat there love Miami Beach. It's a great area to live in, very hot in the wind in the summer, but it's worth it. I'm sure

Lindy  

it's worth it. I'm one of the very few people in the world probably that will say I love the heat and I love the humidity.

Ryan  

Okay, well then you're there you go. Perfect. So what were you doing before the company you started? Just curious.

Lindy  

Sure. I was a creative director in New York City for over 12 years, and I worked at very large companies like L'Oreal. I was at women's health. I was at Entertainment Weekly, which sadly, I think is no longer in print. I had a short stint at Bon Appetit Magazine. And throughout my, I guess, career journey and New York City, I worked, you know, on the brand side. And then, when I moved into publishing, I was working on the sales and marketing side. And then, when I moved to Miami five years ago, I decided that I wanted to follow my dream path of becoming an entrepreneur. And I started a little digital marketing agency at the time, and it was going really well. But what was happening is we started getting all of these referrals coming to us, the people who either pivoted their business, started a new business, or had an existing business, and their website was just completely outdated. And they needed a refresh. They needed a brand new website, and they needed it yesterday. And at the time, we were building very complicated Shopify and Squarespace websites, and we just didn't have it in our margins or our timeframe to be able to help these individuals. And one day, you know, thinking I was like, wow, I've always wanted to create a productized service, one that's very transactional, one that truly helps our customers and really brings value to them. And literally that same day, I was like, well, we love building websites. We are really good at it and really fast. And that's how Up in a Day was born.

Ryan

Are you familiar with a guy named Alex Rosie?

Lindy

I don't believe so.

Ryan  

He might be someone I don't use the word should I hate using the word should, but you should read his book. He's got a book called Million Dollar Offers. He talks about, you know, productizing your offering and his content. His book is called 100 million dollar offer. And he's coming out with a whole series of books, but it is fantastic. And he's got like eight 9005-star reviews on Amazon. So just not just me saying this, but he might be someone you really resonate with. And everyone listening owns a business. This book is excellent. And his content is excellent. So anyway, bigger, I mentioned that.

Lindy  

Yeah, thanks. That's really interesting. I'm all about, you know, finding when we read marketing books on marketing, it's typically said Surrounded by actual physical products as opposed to marketing a service. So I was. Definitely, I would love to check that out.

Ryan  

Yeah, yeah, you're right. So let's talk about your morning routine. Lindy, how do you start your mornings,

Lindy  

I wake up around six to seven, depending on how every day is different for me. So I tried to wake six and seven. And I always start with a morning meditation. It's the same one. I do 40 days straight of meditation, meditating on something very specific. And then either do yoga at home or I will go for a three to four-mile walk. And I always do that before I start my day. And then I come home, have coffee, a little breakfast, and then we get started.

Ryan  

Use an app for meditation, or is it just like a stopwatch kind of thing?

Lindy  

There's a YouTube channel with this yoga instructor. Her name is Kat Methan. And I believe she's from Australia. And I started doing her yoga classes, just like for free her channel during COVID. And I have not stopped, and it just completely changed my mindset. I've slowed down, and my body completely changed. And I never did yoga before. I was always like a sprinter, runner, lifter, all this stuff. And I finally, like, slowed down. And it was I realized that the slow movement exercises are actually what my body needs, as opposed to the high energy, high impact workouts. So it was really interesting to see.

Ryan  

I meditate every morning to write I used to use Insight Timer. Now I'm experimenting with Calm the app. It's paid for it's like 40 bucks a year, I think, but they have a daily 10-minute meditation with a life lesson weaved into it. It was kind of nice like they guided me. And at the last minute, there's some sort of life lesson. And yeah, it's my mornings are much better with that meditation thrown in, for sure.

Lindy  

The calm app is really nice. I don't use it, specifically, but I've poked around in it a few times. And it's a good one.

Ryan  

So besides the beautiful weather and views of Miami Beach, what brings you happiness and fulfillment?

Lindy  

My family, my family, my family. I have a sister and a brother. And my sister has three little ones, all under the age of four, and they are my life. My boyfriend of 10 years. We are very close. We both run our businesses from home, and I couldn't have I couldn't ask for anything more than that. And then what else brings me happiness? Oh, the outdoors, the beach. I do a lot of watersports. I love kayaking. So anything, just like outside in the world, is just so inspirational for me.

Ryan  

Yeah, I agree with that sun hitting your face get out getting outside. Yeah. Especially with like a walk or something like that definitely helps you feel better. Is your boyfriend in tech, too?

Lindy  

He used to be, and now he is a business coach.

Ryan

Oh, nice. I'm just curious.

Lindy  

It's a good question. When I started up in a day, he was coaching me a lot. He's very, very intelligent. He started and sold many companies. And so it was nice to have him on my side because we both come from a publishing background and creative background. So he kind of brings together everything, I'm brought together everything I needed to get up in a day running because I was so used, you know, as a creative director, working for somebody else in a large organization, you're not used to carrying all the marbles up in the air, you just like they ask you to do something, you get it done and go home. And you know, you'd have to think about it. But when you start a new business, and it's a new-to-market service, it gets really real really quick. And I didn't get funding for up in a day I used my I bootstrapped it. And it was scary. And I learned so many lessons in terms of starting a business running a business, pre-systems processes, and of course, just learning a lot about myself as well. And learning how to take breaks, knowing that you can take a half day and just be it was very difficult for me because I'm a mix of type A and type B, and I put a lot of pressure on myself, or at least I used to when I started up in a day to like get this up and running like I had this great idea and everyone's gonna love it. I'm just like have to get up and running now. And so, like you know, setting up the business took six months because it was so new. And so new meaning like what we were providing is so new, and it's very specific. So it was very stressful. So learning to let go and leave the desk and Add and join, like life and join my friends, and on a weekday, starting work a little bit later like that was difficult for me to do. And it's funny, you know, everything evolves when you're starting a business and when you have a business, but the moment I started letting go and getting back to the things that I love and enjoy and focus on the sick focusing on the iPhone, from laying in the sun to going for kayaking at noon, as soon as I started letting go of the company, the company started growing, it was funny, you know, when you kind of like a step back and just be like, okay, just like let this like be for a minute, you kind of see your baby from the outside. And then you can think clearly. And there's something that maybe about the energies that were happening, and all of a sudden, we started getting really busy.

Ryan  

So dealing with the stress and love of starting a new business, what self-care habits did you depend on? Your kind of answer kind of gave some of that a little bit. But I'm wondering, as any others that come to mind getting outside letting go meditation, I'm sure the for any entrepreneurs listening that are in the beginning stages that are going through the stress and the challenges, as you mentioned, which is normal, and everyone will go through it. But what self-care habits Did you depend on to get you through it?

Lindy  

One of them. I wouldn't normally, like my old self would, have been embarrassed to say this. But one of the biggest, I guess, movements that helped me like with my self-care, to kind of like move out of that pressure I was putting on myself, was I had self-love affirmations that I put on sticky notes and put on our bathroom wall. Like we have two bathrooms in our house. And so I use the second bathroom, and I put all these sticky notes. That meant something to me. And I think I had anywhere from 20 to 30 at one time on the bathroom mirror. And I just needed that to kind of just like see, you know, just to remind myself that I'm in such a beautiful place in life like I'm so lucky, I have the opportunity that helped you to build this company, I'm healthy. So just like not to forget who I am. And just to give myself some grace, the other self-care, the yoga was very helpful. The meditation was very difficult for me to get into. And now I really love it. And then the other thing is I just kind of got control over the systems and processes of up in a day. What I mean by that is I had to take a step back and say, Okay, what is it that really needs to get done now and so trying to get everything done at one time. And so that there so by that I took a few steps back and just started putting one foot in front of the other, and it was such a game changer.

Ryan  

Yeah, when I do my morning routine, just writing down my priorities, I just try to think of like, what's the big picture stuff, like the stuff that I really need to get done. And having that clarity pen to paper, like writing it down and seeing it in front of me while I work. I think that's really otherwise, at least for me, I kind of float into no man's land. And I feel like I'm not getting anything done. But I've had like a clear framework of things that I said it's important to get done today. I know I have at least that list to refer back to, not that my day won't get pulled into different directions. But I keep on going back to that list. And at least from my personal experience, I found it to be really helpful.

Lindy  

Oh, and the same way. I'm a big list person. I sometimes make the list at night when I'm leaving my computer, and other times I'll make it first thing in the morning, and there's nothing more satisfying than crossing it off.

Ryan  

Yes. And I'll be vulnerable to showing myself Self Love. I can't remember how you phrased it, but I will admit, okay, here live. We're not live, but on this podcast where I do my journaling, I buy. I'm looking at it right now. And today's entry, I write down that I love myself. So there it is. I don't think I've mentioned that. I love

Lindy  

that. I love that. That was one of mine for a long time too. That's very cool. I do journal I've never been a big journaler, but it's probably because I don't know what it is. I'm typing all day or something. I'm not quite sure. I've just never like actually taken the initiative to start, so that's actually very inspiring. Maybe I'll try doing that. 2023

Ryan  

There it is. The worst case doesn't work for you to stop. Yes. That's right. So I've got one last question for you, Lindy. Then we're going to wrap up with you sharing how everyone can connect with you. I want to talk about the meaning of life through your lens because it is personalized It is a personal question. So through the lens of Lindy, what is the meaning of life?

Lindy  

The meaning of life is love and happiness. Giving love and receiving love makes the world go round.

Ryan  

That is so funny. I had an interview right before for you, and she said the same thing, not about the meaning of life but like her message was love and giving love and receiving love. So that's like seems to be the theme of today.

Lindy

Ah, nice. Theme.

Ryan  

That is a good theme. All right, well, thanks for everything you shared, Lindy if people want to connect with you, where should we send them?

Lindy  

They can connect with me right on our website. It's up in a day.co CEO.

Ryan  

Perfect. We'll link that up in the show notes. Thank you, Lindy, and have a great day.

Lindy

Thank you, you too.

Announcer  

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