Do you have big goals, dreams, or mountains to climb? In today’s episode, Robin Eisenbeis joins us to share how she is creating a life she loves and continuing to grow personally. Listen in to hear how she wrote her book, A Gift for Life, in one year and the meaning and what it looks like to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest.
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Meet Robin
Robin Eisenbeis is an author, adventurer, endurance athlete, amazing wife, mom, daughter and friend.
Robin has raised three amazing children including a D1 Field Hockey player and she loves sharing her book with high school and college teams.
Favorite Childhood Memory
Robin’s parents loved to travel when she was a kid! She remembers going to Sanibel Island and spending hours and hours searching for shells—ultimately leading her and her brother to learning over 50 different names of shells. Through trips like these, she was introduced to the world!
Big Lessons in Writing Her Book
When Robin was writing her book, she learned a couple of unexpected lessons and takeaways in the process:
- When people tell you that you should write a book and share your wisdom, follow that lead.
- We often thing of big goals as huge goals, yet you can set smaller goals. This could be a one year goal.
Achieving Big Goals through Community
When you surround yourself with people who have gone after big goals, you learn what it takes to make those dreams a reality, specifically when it comes down to breaking down those big goals. When you’re with people who believe in their goals and your’s, you’ll achieve those goals!
Work/Life Harmony
Robin wrote her book in just under a year—which is no easy feat. She had to create a work/life harmony for herself, which meant she made a goal to write 500 words per day early in the morning. This didn’t mean she wrote in order, but just wrote what came to her. Her book ended up at 28,000 words.
Radiant Soul Shining
On this podcast, we highlight what makes your radiant soul shine. For Robin, that shine comes from nature. Whether that’s in being outside, hiking, or even in they study and experience of birds, she loves the outdoors. She recently went on an adventure as part of 29029 Everesting, where she climbed the equivalent of Mount Everest in 36 hours. There were 250 people who went. They followed the training for 20 weeks and set their minds on completing the mission.
When you truly believe that you will accomplish something, you will do it.
Keeping a Positive Mindset
Prior to this adventure, Robin asked family members to share encouraging mantras that they could reference while climbing. These included:
- Actually, you can.
- Look what my body is capable of doing.
- Don’t put of tomorrow, what you can accomplish today. Do it now.
Advice to Let Your Radiant Soul Shine
Be bold and find people that want to support you. Then ask yourself, “What’s next?”
Connect with Robin:
instagram.com/daretodreamwithrobin
facebook.com/robinkimball.eisenbeis
If you want to read the transcript, check it out below:
Susan
You guys are going to love hearing from my friend adventurer and author Robin Eisenbeis. I met Robin several years ago in a networking group and reconnected with her in Melissa Ternes’ book club early in 2020. But what Robin didn’t know is that she and I had our eyes on a coaching program led by Jesse Itzler. She joined the program in 2021. And it was not a good time for me. So I lived vicariously through Robin in 2021 as she took on the challenges and the growth that were offered in Jesse’s program. At that point in time, it was called The Big Ass Calendar Club. But it’s changed now to Build Your Life Resume. It has been a blast getting to know Robin and sharing her book, A Gift For Life with my friends, family and connections. Robin, I am so glad you’re here today.
Robin
Well, thank you, Susan. I’m so glad we reconnected because we’ve had so much fun not only in our Build Your Life Resume community but building a network in the woods, like we go hiking together. And we’ve just, you know, built this adventurous group that’s been so much fun. And I’ve so enjoyed following your podcast career and everything that you’re doing too. So thank you for having me on.
Susan
Yes, thank you, you know, and it’s, you’re you’re so right, Robin, we have a great time when we go hiking out there in the woods. And whether it’s by ourselves or with a group of people, we always have wonderful conversations. And one of the things that I have learned through you and being around you, as well as in our communities, which are multiple, that living an adventurous life can be a lot of fun. And just can help to really elevate you or to make your soul shine, right. Yep. So Robin, I love when I am talking with guests on the show to kind of get to know a little bit about them or where they’ve come or what they’ve learned in life. And one of the things that is so cool is hearing favorite stories from your childhood. I know you’re a twin, and which I think is so cool. But would you share with us one of your favorite stories from growing up?
Robin
Oh, I’d love to. My favorite story is, it actually falls under the title of travel. My parents were both entrepreneurs. And they saved money to take my twin and I on these wonderful trips. I think about my, one of my most favorite trips was going to Sanibel Island. And we would just, my twin and I literally we would just go out and we would look for shells all day. And I was just in Kiawah Island over this past weekend and I saw this, I found this shell and I really impressed my friend. I’m like, “oh, that’s an olive shell,” and she said, “how do you know that? I said, Well, my brother and I, we used to go to Sanibel. And we knew like 50 different names of shells. And so I loved it just like popped up. You know, it was one of those childhood memories that just came back, you know, many years later. But I love that my parents really introduced us to the world. I mean, literally the world, but by taking us on these trips, and we’ve my husband and I have done that with our children. So definitely traveling, those are my favorite childhood memories.
Susan
Did you grow up in a small town?
Robin
Yes, Janesville, Wisconsin is about 50,000 people. It’s near Madison and Chicago.
Susan
Okay. One of the reasons I was asking, you know, I live in rural North Carolina. So 50,000 even sounds large. We have about 12,000 Here in our county. And travel was a very important thing for us, because I wanted my children to understand that they didn’t have to stay in Oxford, North Carolina, in rural North Carolina. That they were was this great big world out there waiting for them? And it was theirs for taking, if that’s what they chose. So I thought you were from a smaller area. And I think that’s so amazing. I can just see you running down the beach collecting the shells, probably challenging your brother to who found the most
Robin
Always, we were always competing exactly.
Susan
Oh, my goodness. So Robin, you have written this book A Gift For Life. And I know that this was your first Misogi you ever completed? So can you tell us? What is one of the big lessons you learned while you were writing this book?
Robin
Oh that’s a great question. And I actually have two answers on that. But the first one is when people tell you often, that you should write a book and share your experiences or wisdom, follow that lead. Because I, what I’ve what I have kind of taken for granted things that come naturally to me that I share in my book. The four powers which are, you know, become a master at remembering names, pay yourself first, are you dreaming, and always be adventurous, that doesn’t come natural for a lot of people, it might just be one of those that they need to work on. And I love hearing from so many people, how that has impacted them after they’ve read the book. And the second take away, the biggest lesson is, you know, I think we think of these big goals as huge goals. And I’ll talk about that hopefully a little bit later. But when you surround yourself with people who are doing and accomplishing big goals, the group that you mentioned, Build Your Life Resume, several people are authors in that community. And I just connected with them, how do they do it? Who were their people, and then I set a goal of one year, because I think oftentimes, we set these goals and we think it might be five years and you lose track of the real reason why you’re writing and or whatever that goal is. So for me, I set the goal of one year and I finished it in 353 days, from this very beginning to when it actually got published and I was holding my book. So yeah, I would say those two, because they really kind of go hand in hand. But they are both very, very important.
Susan
Absolutely. And you know, when you set big goals like this, what I have found, and what I hear you saying, when you surround yourself by people who have already done that, or are setting big goals for themselves, you learn how to achieve big goals, and learn how to break them down into the small steps that you need to do to accomplish the big things that truly make a difference in your life and the life of others.
Robin
Absolutely, it is so important to find that community. Because most people when you say that you want to write a book, they’re thinking they hear their fear. And they will say, oh, there’s no way I could ever do that. But when you are with people who believe that they can and have the connections, all of a sudden you think you know what that goal is totally doable. So I definitely want to give a shout out to David Shiner in our builder Build Your Life Resume group as well as Jim House, who’s my writing’s coach. We have so many people that are accessible and, you know, willing to help.
Susan
Absolutely. That’s how this podcast happened. You know, Rob Cressy was willing to share his knowledge and the lessons he had learned through podcasting. It was something that had been on my heart and when he broke it down into the simple steps, you know.
Robin
I love that!
Susan
I think I agree with you. I love that, how important community is. Well in writing a book, I know that you are a mom, you have adult children, like me, you’re an empty nester, however your youngest daughter does play D1 field hockey, so you’re busy with that. You are an adventurer and do some really cool things. We’re going to talk about that in just a minute. But when you think about writing your book, you set this goal of the year. You wrote it in a couple days less than a year. How were you able to accomplish what I would call work life harmony or right or life harmony as you were going through this process?
Robin
I love that question. What really helped me is I really broke down my year goal to a day, every single day. My goal was to write 500 words. And I was extremely excited about this book and very passionate, I would usually wake up super early, like 3 or 4am. And I would just go into a special area that I go and write. And I would just write on my computer until I saw five hundred words. And some days, I wrote a lot more than that, just depending on what happened. And I remember saying to somebody, you know, this is my goal, five hundred words a day. And she said, well, that’s not a lot. I mean, I could write like, easily one thousand or two thousand a day. But it’s consistently writing that every single day, and even the days that the words just didn’t come to me, I would just write and I would somehow incorporate that later, you know, in different chapters. But just like exercise, changing what we eat or drink, it’s consistently doing those habits. And for me, that really helped tremendously. You know.
Susan
I’m just gonna ask this, of course, the listeners may or may not have seen your book. I have your book. I’ve read your book. How many words are in the book? Do you know?
Robin
It’s over, it’s close to twenty eight thousand.
Susan
Okay, so I’ve never thought about that, you know, like, how many words are in a book? Or how many words do you write. Five hundred doesn’t sound like a large number when you think about thirty thousand in a book. But again, some days, I could imagine that five hundred would be challenging.
Robin
It is. And those are actually the days that you look back and you think, wow, I really got some great information on you know, on my computer on those days. So you just have to dig deep.
Susan
Yes, very interesting. One thing that I hear in the back of my mind is, I don’t know that it was Jesse or someone else that I follow. They say writers, write, writers, write. So what a great way to accomplish your book and to be able to get it done. So Robin, let’s talk about being an adventurer. And let’s talk about your radiant soul. So our listeners can’t see you. But you truly are a radiant soul sister, your eyes shine, you are happy 99.9% of the time, I’m quite sure. You’re a joy to be around. But what do you do every day or in most days to keep your radiant soul shining?
Robin
Oh, thank you for those compliments and I am happy and I spend a lot of time in nature. And that’s one thing I talk about in my book. I’m really into birds. I call myself an ornithologist, which is somebody who studies birds. And it’s just really fun. I mean, it’s, they’re kind of quirky. And it’s fun, just like the seashells that you know, know the names. Would it be okay, if I share this big adventure that I just did?
Susan
Yes, I would love for you to share about your big adventure. So very exciting.
Robin
It is. So as you mentioned, Susan, I like to have a big goal, which we call a Misogi every year. So last year was writing my book. And this year, my Misogi, this goal that really scared me a lot is called 29029 Everesting. And basically, we met at Snowbasin Mountain in Utah. And we climbed, my husband and I, Charlie, he’s a physician. And we trained for nine months together. And our goal and everybody’s goal, there are two hundred and fifty people there, was to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest, which is 29,029 feet in thirty six hours. So we started at 6am. And we had finished by 6pm the next day. And it was an incredible challenge. I mean, I woke up many times just you know, like, will really finish this.
But what was so cool is you know how we talked earlier about you know, and you mentioned work life harmony, surrounding yourself with people who have similar goals. There were two hundred and fifty people on that mountain who all wanted to finish and when you finish, you earn a red hat. So the very last, so we had thirteen ascents. It was about thirty miles, 2.3 miles up and we had altitude. At the top it was almost nine thousand feet. So we had an ascent of two thousand three hundred altitude gain every ascent. And you know I live in North Carolina, it’s three hundred feet above sea level, pretty flat. So we trained for altitude. We trained for, it was all climbing up you’re ride a gondola down. But the biggest thing that my husband I learned is, number one we followed the training. We had twenty weeks of coaching. And we did that but the most important aspect of this was our mind, our mindset. We never questioned that we wouldn’t finish. And we had two lightning, hail, rainstorms, and we hiked through the night. And, you know, for some people, that was it, it was like, you know what we’re done. And, but Charlie and I, we just believed we knew we were going to do it. And I really, I wanted to share with your listeners, you know, when you truly believe that you can accomplish something, no matter what happens, you will finish it. You will accomplish that goal.
And that was my biggest takeaway, because I think so many times, you know, we set these goals, and we think we just start talking, you know, and it’s like, but to put those positive thoughts into surround yourself around people who are doing the same goal. So, it was an incredible adventure and now I can actually call myself an endurance athlete. Which is really cool. It is it’s like, and there are people all ages. This weekend they start Whistler. There’s two weekends and there’s an 80 year old climbing, hiking. So I just want to encourage everybody, you know, to look for those challenges, because they’re fun to train for. It got us out of bed every morning, because we knew we had a workout to achieve. And it’s fun to talk about, like, I love telling stories, as you can tell. And I know you do, too. And you did something, you know, very challenging as well, Hell on the Hill, but it’s like, it’s fun to do those scary adventures.
Susan
It’s, you know, I have goosebumps. So it’s a Goosebumps story. You know, I know it’s a challenge. I can hear the song Ain’t No Mountain High Enough playing. Because I know when I was doing Hell on the Hill, nothing compared to 29029. But yeah, you know, that’s one of the songs Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. When you see a mountain, whether it’s in business or in life, or in reality, and you think how am I going to do that? Right? When you’ve done something like 29029, you’ve realized, I would imagine, you can do that. It’s one foot in front of the other and that’s all you have to worry about.
Robin
And then the next time you have a challenge, you think, my husband already said this to each other? Well, we’ve already climbed Mount Everest, we can do this, we could do hard things, you know. So it’s like, yes, and I think that’s why it’s good to put us in those situations, to remind us that we really can do, we can, you know, climb Mount Everest. We can do big challenges.
Susan
Exactly, like the body is capable of so much more than we give it credit for I believe. You know, I want to ask you one other thing, because as you mentioned, I do know you and I got to follow along on your journey. And you had something special that you carried along with you on the hike, or on each ascent. You went up the mountain thirteen times. Will you share with the listeners what you had with you to keep that mindset in the right place?
Robin
Yes, it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. So I asked several family members and some other people for a very short mantra that we could use, that we could say at the very beginning of the ascent. And so our daughter who you mentioned, she plays field hockey at UNC, and she had this mantra that was “actually you can.” And that was her mantra. We had, “look what my body is capable of doing.” For my dad, it was “don’t put off tomorrow, what you can accomplish today, do it now.” Which I have in the beginning of my book. And so I had a different mantra so we had a different mantra for every ascent. And it was funny because somebody asked us yesterday, like, “what did you talk about?” And you know, because you’ve been training all these times, we’ve met a lot of people, but we kept saying that mantra in our head. And it just gave us new energy every time and so, you know, put up little post it notes, you know, whatever your mantra is for the week, the day, the month. Because it really helps and it just kind of keeps you focused and that was really we were 100% focused. So thank you for bringing that up.
Susan
Yes, I just love that and I think it was a powerful part of keeping your head in the game. You can have these mantras, but you have these people with you in spirit.
Robin
You said that exactly that is exactly what it was. It felt like you know, my mom was walking right along with me saying everything, it was just really very special.
Susan
Right? Oh my goodness. Robin, thank you for this time together and sharing all this. I do have one more question for you before we close out today but before we get there, I know that our listeners would love to find where to find your book, A Gift For Life.
Robin
Sure, my website is www.agiftforlifebook.com. Also, and Susan I don’t even know if you know this well my book is on Amazon as well. But Audible is coming out hopefully next week which is really, really exciting. So I know a lot of people love to listen on Audible. Also on Instagram at @daretodreamwithRobin and Facebook Robin Kimball Eisenbeis.
Susan
That will be in the show notes. So people will be able to find you that way as well. So if this episode has you thinking about how to put yourself first while living your life on purpose, and having work life harmony, be sure to connect with me @SusanCrewCo on all my socials or reach out to me through my website SusaCrewsCo.com to schedule a time to chat.
Robin, it’s always a pleasure spending time with you. So I know that you’ve dropped some golden nuggets here. Congratulations on completing 29029. That is a big deal, listeners she’s an endurance athlete. It’s a big deal. But tell us if you had one piece of advice for that woman or that listener today that might need to hear about work life harmony or letting their radiant soul shine. What do you have?
Robin
My advice is be bold and to find people who really support you and really want to challenge you. You know, maybe they want to do that half marathon with you that you’ve thought about or you know, hike a mountain but really maybe get outside of your inner circle and see who else is out there. Just to find what else you are capable of and really to to ask yourself what’s your Everest? What next? What’s next?
Susan
I love that. Oh my gosh. Once again thanks so much and listeners if you have enjoyed another episode of the Radiant Soul Sisters. I want to thank you for joining in today and hearing Robin Eisenbeis. Until next time when we shine the light on another radiant soul sister. I’m Susan Crews, your host.
