Orangetheory Fitness: Ellen Latham

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Hey, it's Guy here, and before we start the show, a question Do you ever get nervous when performing or speaking in front of an audience? I definitely do, and I have to stand in front of a lot of audiences. Well, I recently interviewed Zoe Deshnell, and she had a great tip I hadn't heard before, a tip that's allowed her to get out of her head and into the moment. You can find out all about it and hear my conversation with Zoe on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for the great creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts. And now

On to today's show. So how many treadmills and rowing machines did you initially buy? Ten Ten ten rowers, ten treadmills, okay. Right. So when I opened up that studio, I spent every penny on the treadmills. I wanted to pay everything all out.

And even more insane is that I had not piloted that actual program. And I'm like, oh my goodness, what if this doesn't work? I just signed a five-year lease, I have all this equipment in there, and I just again we get back to Intuition We get back to what's in your gut that you feel, I just feel That's

There is no way people aren't gonna Exit there. Without results. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements.

They built. I'm Guy Roz, and on the show today, how Ellen Latham went from being fired from her dream job. To a second act as the creator of Orange Theory. A fitness franchise with more than fifteen hundred studios around the world. The startup game is for young people, right?

This is a common belief and a frustration I hear from older folks who think you have to be in your twenties and eat ramen out of a bag to build a company. Except it's simply untrue. In fact, in 2018, Harvard Business Review published a study by four academics about this very topic. The crunch numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And they came to a counterintuitive conclusion about startups, which is this.

The average age of a successful startup founder in the United States? It's forty five. Forty-five. And we've had a bunch of these older founders on this show. Roxanne Quimby was forty when she founded Bird's Bees with her partner Bert Chavitz. P. Warhurst was 46 when he started the national storage business, Pods. Pat Brown was fifty seven when he left his job as a professor at Stanford.

And started impossible foods. Bob Moore was also in his late fifties when he left seminary school. and created Bob's Red Mill, one of the biggest natural food brands in America. The thing about starting a company later in life is that you usually come to the table with a lot of experience and credibility. So for anyone listening to this today, feeling like you missed the boat somehow, Well just wait until you learn about Ellen Latham.

Because Ellen was well into her fifties when, with two partners, she started Orange Theory, a fitness brand that today has over 1500 studios around the world. Now, if you haven't heard of Orange Theory, it's a fitness program that combines cardio, strength training, and core exercises into one workout. Orange Theory studios usually have a row of treadmill and rowing machines. And the idea is to keep your heart rate elevated throughout the exercise period. And what's amazing is that the brand, which seems like it's everywhere,

was only started in twenty ten. Now at the time, Alan was running her own small exercise studio in South Florida. where she developed a workout that would become known as Orange Theory. For most of her life, Ellen was a fitness instructor and a manager of fitness centers. She worked at YMCAs and later at a few high end spas in Florida.

But after she was fired from one of those jobs after a conflict with the owner, Ellen had to figure out how to make ends meet. And that was how she started her own business. First, by running fitness classes out of her home. and eventually renting a small studio.

Ellen first learned about fitness from her dad. He was a high school coach in Niagara Falls, New York, where Ellen grew up in the sixties and seventies. There were four kids in the family, but Ellen's extended family was much bigger than that. A huge Italian family with lots of uncles, aunts, and cousins all around. The whole caboodle. Yes, I was uh born to the youngest of eight. Children from an Italian immigrant family.

My father was the youngest of the eight brothers and sisters. All of the relatives lived in Niagara Falls, so just the eight brothers and sisters. And the first and second cousins were a hundred and forty calendrelles in Niagara Falls, New York. Wow. And there was always a cousin in a class that I was in or a teacher, and we had Every holiday together at my grandmother's house. It was very tight. My grandmother spoke very little English, all Italian, and it was all that you see on TV was exactly how I grew up. Wow. Your dad was a PE coach. My father was a phys ed teacher and football and track coach and he was he they people in the city didn't even call him by his name. Again, it's like one of those lifetime TV movies. It would just be hey coach, hey coach. So you're you're in the grocery store and someone screaming across the tomatoes, Hey coach, see you at the game this weekend. And then everyone

Would come out to the football games, the whole city. Yeah. And um how would you describe yourself as a kid? I mean your dad was a coach, were you I mean fifties, sixties, you I know you grew up in the sixties. Girls started to play more sports or to you know, that started to become more common, but still not until really the seventies. Yeah. Did you play sports as a kid? Yeah, very, very little. I played softball intermediaries, uh I played some volleyball, and then you know, being a cheerleader was kind of as physical as you kind of got in the fifties and sixties. But I truly was my father's daughter. There's not a doubt out of all four of us, I just took to him in every which way. You know, they say, I guess your first love is your father. That's no joke. He was bigger than life to me. And uh And just influenced me.

Growing up And to this day at sixty seven years of age, immensely very disciplined. I was that kid who was extra early like uh getting projects done at school. I was Kind of that Stay within the lines kind of kid. You know, discipline was big to me, and my father, you know, that was big to him.

I guess you were probably, I don't know, fifteen or sixteen years old. when seventy two was the year Title Nine was passed, which really start even the playing field literally for boys and girls, men and women, um in high schools and colleges that there had to be equal access. And that really began an explosion

In women's girls and women's sports. Do you remember Being fifteen, sixteen You know,'cause I think you were already like into fitness, physical fitness at that time. Yeah, my first job was at seventeen and my job was working at the YWCA and it was to put women and I don't know if you even know what I'm talking about, but in fat jiggly machines. Yeah, you've seen you've seen those those old newsreels of that. Did they work those machines you'd stand in there? There'd be like a strap around you to just vibrate.

Right? People would stand in those things. Okay. I would go, I'd strap that around the woman's hip, thighs and buttons, she'd grab a magazine, she'd jiggle for about fifteen minutes, I'd go and turn off the switch, and I'd send her on her way. Unbelievable. Like, there must have been somebody who said, Well the science shows that this will make you lose weight. There was no science to fitness for many, many decades, but Women they came in, they joined that membership and it gave me my first job in the fitness industry. This is what we what your first job was. And and I don't know, I c what was a YWCA in nineteen seventy three? What were there classes, were there 'Cause it this is sort sort of pre-aerobics era. Yes. That was we used to call them slimnastic classes. Slimnestics. And yes, you wore your tights in those like very unattractions and uh

You would circle your arms about a thousand times in one direction, shoulder width height a thousand in the other direction, and that was supposed to tone the arms. So I started teaching those classes. Oh yes, gosh, I wish I had this all at a reel. Yeah. But yeah, that was what was going on then. Then aerobics hit and the leg warmers came out and Jane Fonda, you know, made a big hit with aerobics at that time, and I was then teaching kind of choreograph. I've taught about everything you could teach as far as group fitness. And and I guess you stayed in the area you went to for college, you went to SUNY Buffalo. And then you went on to get your master's degree.

And I guess while you were at SUNY Buffalo, you were also teaching at the Y M C I think dance aerobics, which uh was like sort of an early kind of Aerobics class? Yes. how did you learn how to become a teacher for that? I mean, w was there like a certification or was just like oh yeah, Ellen, you know, she could do it. Like, you know, Ellen, you know how to do this, right? Like why don't why don't you just teach this class?

Yeah, in the early days, that's exactly what you did. And then it started where there were tapes and oh my gosh, I remember we had to like I had albums at home and had to design my own music and put it on one of those little, you know, cassette tapes. Yeah. You really kind of did a lot of winging it. And then They started to get a little bit more organized when Jazzer Psi started pulling together kind of dance aerobics in more of a structured format, but nothing ever based on science. You know, it really was. This kind of trendy fad type of stuff, particularly for women. Yeah. And how would you describe your f your phys level at that time? You're teaching dance aerobics, I and you were in your probably late twenties at that point. Were you in pretty good shape?

Yeah. And working at the YMCA, it was very interesting because working there full time, you know, I was in the weight room with the men and there were no at that time. in the late seventies, early eighties women lifting weights. But being I knew all these guys and I worked there full time, I'd go down in this basement weight room and I was lifting weights with them. I was doing some triethlons. I I was definitely, you know, into the fitness part of things. Hm. And I guess eventually you worked your way up to become the director of the Y M CA in Niagara Falls, right? Yes, I became the first female director. There was only men before me.

So you had a pretty good life. I mean you and I think you got married. And eventually had a kid, was your expectation to stay? You know,'cause you're a big family, Mom and Dad and siblings and aunts and uncles all there. Did you expect that you would make a life in Niagara Falls?

So hi uh married my high school sweetheart. My sister moved to Fort Lauderdale and I would come here and I would just Want to go to all of the fitness studios and gyms and see what was going on here, and could not believe such the difference between the small town of Niagara Falls and there was just wow, a real desire to, you know, I was a big fish in a small pond in Niagara Falls as I kept pushing through, you know, managing the Y and all of this, but Uh there was this great desire to come here and I knew I had to start to be a small fish in a big pond, but my husband at that time and I moved here to Florida. We did not have our son at that time, and then we had him here in Florida. But you moved to Florida without a plan?

Well, we didn't have jobs. No, we did not. And uh But you know, spa were great, were huge in Florida at that time. So I applied for a job at what's called Bonaventure Spa. And that's where the movie stars would come like Dallas was big then and Linda Evans would come and stay a week. You know, this is where you would come, you'd stay a week. You'd get fit, you'd take a thousand classes, and I went and tried out for a job there, got that and said Wow. I'd like

Living in this working in this kind of environment. And you were hired as the exercise physiologist. You had a master's degree, so you were I mean, obviously you had serious. And what did that mean? You were you were hired to oversee their exercise programs? So I did a lot of the testing. So when the clients came in, I would do like submax cardio testing, that type of thing on a bike usually to see where they're at. I then gave them some information of what they should train at heart rate wise. So I was doing this way back and And then give them actually a written program to go home with. Now this is before, you know, it's a lot of computer kind of things going on. So I literally remember like handwriting all of this out with sometimes stick figures, which is absolutely insane. Yeah.

Tell me what was happening in the world of fitness in nineteen eighty eight, you know, when you start because I think you will you end up being there for about five years. Um at Bonaventure. Yeah, so that was like aerobics and you know it was all about fat burning for these women. That's what they were interested in. Yeah. So there was a ton of classes. I taught water aerobics, I taught stretch, I taught relaxation, I did morning walks with them in the morning. Uh, we had a dietitian there, so there was a lot of nutrition, and it was very high end, and the owners at that time were very willing to put a lot of uh money into it, which you know I had never Been around whatsoever in my life, so I just thought that this was like the best.

Take me back to an Ellen Latham class in nineteen ninety. You know, your dad was the coach, so he was the guy with the whistle and he was like, was that your style as a fitness instructor? Totally. There are people today who are like, do you remember when you were and I had very curly, thick Italian hair down my back. It was of huge volume with those headbands on, and very scary some of the photos. Uh and yeah, I was like over zealous and over inspiring and yeah. I was my father. Would you would you like come on let's go, you know, don't be wimps like that kind of stuff, like tough love? I wasn't that. I wasn't that, and it's so funny you say that because when we created Orange Theory, I told the guys please Let's not have boot camp in our name because I did not like that. Ten is enough, give me more. I wanted that. Ten is more than enough. You look great, and you tell me when you're ready to push a little more. I'm here to support that. Yeah. There's a photo of you in your

gotta be in your m late thirties, early forties, and you're just ripped. You are just like really strong. You're you got you're think you're doing um Rose with weights. Yeah. And so I mean Did you have women who saw you and say, I want to look like you?

And show me how to do that. Yeah, I mean Women liked my arms. They definitely did. You get a lot of cotton arms and legs. And that was, you know, because I was working out with the guys. And you know, definitely women who started to be more comfortable with that. But it was a very slow integration because women were very panic. That they were gonna become too muscular. There was that for many years the fear of oh, I don't want to get bulky, I don't want to get big. I liked what was going on, you know, in my body because I I just really liked it. I like all aspects of it. So but you know, a lot of women weren't quite ready for that.

You in your first like few years there, you and the man you moved out with, the husband uh at the time, you divorced when I think your son was little, maybe a year or two old. Right. How did you

deal with that at the time. I mean I can't imagine I kept imagining that was a really hard time for you. Yeah, he was two, and definitely the you know, definitely one of the major hurdles when you look down the hurdles of your life and the challenges of your life. Listen, we were together since we were fourteen, fifteen, small town Niagara Falls, and nothing majorly happened up and beyond. We've kinda You know, grew into do different people. So young. Yeah. You didn't yeah. It really was that. But he was a fantastic father to my son. He is like a part of our family now. Nick, my existing partner in him. We've all go and spend time at my home in Nashville, literally under the same roof, visiting my son and the grandkids. We have the healthiest type of divorce that uh could be. That's awesome.

Alright, so meantime you you're Building this reputation in Florida. And then in like I guess around nineteen ninety three you you have an opportunity to jump over to another spa in Miami Beach, this one called the Williams Island Spa,

And you end up spending several years there, like I think like six years pr and pretty early on you became The spawn director. Yes. And what w w was that like? I mean it was this is nineteen ninety three, it was uh I guess a a luxury spa? It was a luxury spa. This was my

dream job. I absolutely love working with the clients, you know Fitness in exercise isn't something that people skip through the tulips and want to do, at least not the masses. You know, you some that are innately love exercise, but it's not like a massage. Oh, I can't wait to go get a massage, you know? So it's how do you change that? way of thinking for people. How do you really give them hope when they really feel I'm not gonna be able to do it? It's too hard. I won't stick with it. All of these doubts it was that kind of challenge that I loved. Yeah. And then even more doors started opening where I wrote a fitness column for the Miami Herald. I did fitness tips on Fox News and Channel Seven in Miami. And then I started doing celebrity boot camp. So soap opera stars from New York would come down for a week. I gave them the idea because I used to do this at Bonaventure Spa. So they'd come down for a week and I'd have a group of my trainers and myself and we would put'em up and we would feed them and we'd do everything from rollerblading on the beach to fitness classes, and it was really for the facility all about this great publicity they would got, and they got a lot.

Yeah. It was truly The dream job. Ellen, you I think have the kind of personality that but you've just got a million ideas and and I have to imagine that while you were there,

you were just inundating the owners with ideas like let's do this, let's do that, let's do this and that and probably Some of those or many of those ideas. brought in more customers. Absolutely, I literally brought spinning to Florida. So I was at a convention and it was great they'd send me to every convention and I want to go and I saw Johnny G in the corner who Johnny G invented spinning and he's in the corner with two bikes and I go over. And I'm talking to him, and he's from South Africa. He's got this accent, and he says, you know, this is great workout classes on bikes in a group and

You know, I'm kinda looking a little sideways, going, Oh oh gee, I don't know. He put me on a bike, he put me through like I think a half hour and I was like, Oh, yes, yes, and yes. I went back to the owners and I said, Please let me Bring in ten bikes, you will get ridiculous publicity from this. And this is like ninety-eight, ninety-nine. Well, yeah. W way before it was out there. Yeah. Because I remember when I was a kid, we had like a an exercise bike. Those existed, but spinning was different. This was new. Absolutely. So they were like, uh okay, Ellen, uh, what do we? I said, listen, don't worry about it. I just intuitively felt there was something to it. Yeah. But we brought it in and you brought 10 spin bikes in. Ten spin bikes. You couldn't people I mean there were wait lists beyond wait list, the Miami Herald, the Sunset and all the newspapers, the TV stations. What is this weird class because it wasn't, it wasn't out there. And uh But you're absolutely right. I was just always excited about innovation, about, you know, what's next. Yes, you're spot on.

All right, so you start spinning classes there at the gym. And everything's going great. And You get fired. I did.

Nineteen ninety nine. What what you're forty three years old, I think, around that time. What what's going on? So you know, these were private owners and I'm me and I was always into continually wanting to do more and grow. And I think I was feeling that the four walls were maybe, you know, a little tight and I wanted to do some things on the outside more. You were entrepreneurial. Exactly. But you were an employee. And they wanted you to

Focus on their business, understandably. Exactly. Yeah. And I probably pursued a few things that, you know what did you do? So Fort Lauderdale didn't have spinning. So my friend owned a gym and I had conversations with him of, you know, wanna partner up. We put fifteen bikes in. Now I had this kind of down to a science. And uh, you know, he was like, Yeah. And so let's bring those back and and so you bought some bikes or you bought them together? So we got'em together and we were gonna do this little which I I had discussions with, you know, my owners about this. Wait, they found out about this. Did you try to did you keep the gym quiet? Or you I had conversations with them in the early stages about it, then yeah, kind of silent. Then they brought me into kind of uh is this something you're doing? And I said, Yeah, I really want to do this type of thing. And they said, Well, then we need to part ways.

Wow. And it was like quite scary because again, I'm like out of a very good paying job and you know, I've got a nine year old son and I'm single parenting. And but again, it was just this like There was obviously an itch that I had to scratch. Yeah. But at that moment, of course. You're sitting in

Wow. What did I do now? Yeah. So uh basically get up the next day with that Ache in the pit of your stomach.

You know, really decided, you know, and this is where, you know, my father, he was still alive then. He was such a great influence. And he was one that focused on so there's a sports psychologist theory called momentum shifting. And you can momentum shift up positively or down negatively. So you know, your team's losing, your players are not performing. Instead of focusing on what's not going right, focus on what they do well, have discussions about that, put energy into that, and that's how you will climb out of that. And he was Lived by this whole momentum shift up theory. We actually had discussions about that at that time. And you called him and you said dad I I've gotta leave this job or they're basically asking me to to leave. Yeah. And I don't know what to do and do you remember what he said to you?

You know, he made me start to think about well what Do I do well? What can I start building off of? So I did get that little concession, spinning concession going, and that brought a nice supply. Not a lot, but at least, you know, some finances in. And then um I started doing Pilates because I went and got a Pilates certification, I just kept certifying and everything, and I bought one machine, I put it in a spare room next to my son's bedroom, and I had I solicited the women in my spinning classes to come and do private Pilates with me in my home. And that's how I started my entrepreneurial hanging of a shingle in the spare room next to my son's bedroom. When we come back in just a moment, how Ellen moves from that spare room in her house to her own studio.

And how an unexpected windfall from Cole's department store helps her grow even bigger. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening. to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 1999, 2000.

And Ellen is teaching Pilates out of a spare room in her house. She'd love to open her own studio, but she has no money to do it. And then one day when she is literally getting her nails done. She stumbles on an opportunity. I did my nails at a spa that had two floors. The second floor was

The woman who owned it had kind of a storage room, eleven hundred square feet, that she just stored stuff in. The girl who did my nails, uh, I was telling her all about, and I said, you know, I don't know, I just feel like there's something to this Pilates. I think if I did it in a group setting, no one was doing Pilates with ten machines. Absolutely not at that time. No one matter of fact when I went for certification, they kind of poo-pooed doing in a group. There's no way you can do this in a group. You gotta correct people too much, and but my brain just works differently of how I saw it. And so I just felt there was something to it. And so I she said, Talk to the owner, I'm gonna set you up with a meeting with her. I talked to her, she said, I'll take the boxes out, let's figure out a a year to year lease. So I didn't have to go hang a shingle anywhere. And Nick, my partner, who now we're twenty-two years being together at that time, we had been together a couple years, and he basically said, I will loan you the money. to buy the machines and I bought ten Pilates machines. How much did each one cost, do you member? Oh they were pretty expensive. I think the whole thing cost about thirty eight thousand dollars that he loaned me. And uh I bought'em right out.

And I put'em in there. I figured out how to do it in a group. I was only doing one on ones before, but how would I teach But now you had ten clients. A group. That's right. But that's right up my alley is kind of figuring out group fitness a little out of of typical lane. Yeah. And um It exploded. And I paid Nick back. In four months. Wow. And were you leading all the classes? Was just you in this studio and you teaching all the classes, or were you able to hire somebody else?

There was me and one other person, but I was absolutely teaching morning, night. And Danny. Wow. Yeah. So you were there all the time running this thing. And what was the studio called? So it was called Ellen Studio Fit. And it was just Pilates. Just Pilates. Okay. Tell me a little bit about'cause Pilates is um a lot of core exercise, right? But there's not a lot of resistance or impact, right?

So Pilates is about your stabilizer muscles. So you have muscles at your joints, at your spine. They stabilize your bones, muscle to muscle. They are your inside muscles. That's how I look at them. You have outside muscles, you work out in the gym. These are your inside muscles. So yeah, they're going to make you from the inside out strong. This is gonna prevent injury. This is going to give you better posture. This is gonna give you more flexibility. And many of the women saw. differences in their trunk because the trunk is the main stabilizing muscular for your arms and legs to work off of. So they all s they started seeing all this reshaping and that's what they absolutely loved about it. And it was all women, your customers? Very few men. Very few men.

All women, although a funny kinda exciting story, one of my women clients was Matt Damon's wife now, Lucy. She was a bartender and Miami, and he is still married to her, a matter of fact. And so she's coming taking class. When she was just started dating him and I don't forget her telling me one day, so I'm gonna bring um my boyfriend to class, do you mind? And I said, Absolutely not. Of course bring him and she goes, Well He's kind of like a movie star. So it was right out of the gate like Mad Damon's taking a Pilates class. Yeah. So the Pilates Gym as a standalone Pilates gym

Lasted for about four years, is that right? Yes. Okay. And you because of a variety of things, you had to move the location and you were getting feedback from clients that they wanted something more. you started to think about

Like a a new fat burning. Work out. Correct. So they were looking for a workout that would burn fat, that would be of a cardio workout, and Pilates didn't do that. And uh And then it just so happened that, you know, talk about timing. I guess I've had a lot of fortune at timing.

A Cole's department store wanted to build right on top of me while my lease wasn't done, so they had to buy me out. So now I had like some money to move to a bigger space. And I said, okay, I'll build another room and I'm gonna create The ultimate metabolic workout for you guys. So I ended up. Ah, finding this chip space. Uh the which was bigger. And built it out. A friend of mine husband was a builder, so he helped me out. And I built the first phase of what now

Is the orange theory fitness workout? All right, let me step out and for the story in a second, ask about the science of weight loss. Because of course this is elusive, right? I mean it's like the fountain of youth or the holy grail. Everybody's been searching for it. But My understanding weights and resistance training actually has a bigger impact on weight loss than cardio alone. It's a combination of both, but when you do cardio like we do it, which is interval training.

You are asking the human heart, which is the most important muscle in your body, to exert itself over 80%, 80 to 85%, and you create what is called an oxygen debt. So you know when you're puffing air, when you're like really pushing hard. If you do at least twelve to twenty minutes of that in your workout, your body has to reap. pay that debt. So over the next twelve, twenty-four hours The human cells, your body is working harder to bring it back to that homeostatic state. So that is what is changing your metabolism, hormonally, all of those good things. Lifting weights is absolutely a great complement. You want that to it, but you would not not want to have a cardio component. Yeah. And so How did you start to think about what

w how you could answer the sort of the demand from your clients. H how did you start to think about A new kind of exercise regimen. So that's where I went back on all those years in exercise fizz and really understanding how the human body responds to exercise. And that's when I said heart rate interval training. That is the key. Because what you can do in 12 to 20 minutes of getting your heart rate over 80%, you would have to go jog at just a steady state pace for an hour. and a half. So 12 to 20 minutes to an hour and a half pick one. Most people would pick the 12 to 20. So when you want to challenge yourself, especially in intervals, The muscle cells that you want to hit are all in your lower body. You know, that's where the large muscle is of our body. That's where you start to get real your heart rate goes up. Squatting, for example. Correct. Correct. So treadmill's the best way to do that. That's the best piece of equipment. And then we did put strider and bike in there for people with orthopedic issues. Got it.

And then the rowers was non-impact power. So think of power as like a light bulb. So a 100 watt light bulb has more wattage to it than a 40 watt light bulb. As you age, you lose wattage. That's that energy. I need another cup of coffee. You're losing this energy cellularly. So I need to find something that. So for example, CrossFit uses box jumps. So you know how they explosively jump well, I knew my knees weren't gonna be interested in that, and my women weren't gonna be interested in that. So I had to figure out what could I find that would be give the same physiologic response, but non-impact to the joints. And I found these rowers that no one was using in the corner of gyms. Yeah. And so I said, perfect. I'm gonna use rowers for my power wattage, I'm gonna use treadmills for my interval training, and I'm gonna use dumbbell and body weights and weighted balls and bosus for what's called usable functional strength. And by the way, this was not a new theory, like this was the basis of a lot of exercise routines, right?

Yeah, I absolutely did not create interval training. It was created in the nineteen forties. And basically all I did is put terms. We have base push and all out. Base is your aerobic zone. Push is your anaerobic zone. And all out is you kind of just finish off with piling some lactic acid in the system where you have to walk it off. Right. Basically the idea was You'd have three different intensity levels. During the exercise. The base level, I guess just sort of sort of A Robin. really getting your heart rate going and then all out

Getting you to the maximum heart rate, right? Yes. Correct. And so it's really this dance between bass and push that you become extremely metabolically charged. And that's how I was training. So that's a part of it, too. Don't forget, I was now at that time 51. So it was like there was also an aspect of What am I, you know, wanna do in the next couple decades without damaging myself? There was this great varied fitness levels in a class. I mean, I would have a sixty five year old with a you know who had heart issues next to a Miami dolphin in my class. And they're all taking the same class. But this is m this is interesting because you're coming up with a

a new way of exercising this treadmill. There's gonna be the rower. And the rower's low impact. That's great. Yeah. But I mean, you it seems very counterintuitive because if you are you had to move to a new space and like from a You'd already invested all this money in Pilates Gear like

From a cost effective perspective, like the best thing to do would have been to like just put mirrors all around the walls and a couple of ballet bars and then done, you got a class, right? Like you don't have to buy any equipment. Now you're talking about treadmills And rowing machines. I mean that's like Insane. Yeah, it's insane. It it is absolute and the and even more insane is that I had not piloted that actual program. So I'm running my women around parks doing bass pushing all out. I'm got bosus in the parking lot doing those bosou balls are it's like a half yoga ball with a rigid back and you can

stand on it and use it for push ups and you were you were using Bossu balls and things like that as to experiment to figure out what worked. In parking lots. In parking lots. With whoever would sign up. Exactly. Well I had this group that was, you know very committed to me, my Pilates women. So when I opened up that studio, I spent every penny on the treadmill. I wanted to pay everything all out. You know that comes from my father, a family thing. Not a lot of things you got on credit. You're paying stuff out. And I did that and I'm like, oh my goodness What if this doesn't work? I just signed a five year lease. I have all this equipment in there, and I just again we get back to Intuition we get back to what's in your gut that you feel I just feel

that there is no way people aren't gonna Exit there without results. So How many treadmills and rowing machines did you initially buy? Ten.

Ten treadmills. Ten rowers. Ten rowers, ten treadmills. And when you start it. Like when you Bring people in, you're like, Okay, we got the rowers. And the treadmills and the bowshoe balls and just like listen the weights and just

Follow my instructions like That must have been weird to like g go into a room with like ten treadmills, ten rowers behind it, boy balls. And weights and like what how did people react initially? Oh my gosh. It was literally a three ring circus. And there was a lot of trial and error, let's face it, you know, and the fact of figuring out like I had people who running into the bathroom throwing up'cause they over exerted and I had to really figure out like how to bring them back with language, with you know the design of the template. So there was absolutely a learning curve, thank goodness.

M many of those early members are still working out in that original studio doing this work out'cause they found such success with it, but they stuck with it, even through the learning process. So initially this was called the ultimate workout, right? That's what you called it. Ellen's ultimate workout. Ellen's ultimate workout. And it was An hour, right? Roughly an hour. What did I mean, just from a business standpoint, right? how did you make sure that this was gonna be sustainable?'Cause you'd invested a lot of money in all this equipment

Walk me through the math. charge people for the classes and you needed the classes to be full. Yeah, you know what's really crazy then? I didn't even sell memberships then. I only sold it by the class. By the class. That's really crazy. So you have to really be performing if you're talking about, you know, you're only getting paid for people showing up in that class, not just uh membership turning over every year. So you know, it really forced me to not only be a great performer with this kind of workout myself, but start to train other coaches to coach this workout as well. Yeah. You know, listen, in the beginning, it was a crawl. It wasn't like I was packed. out of the gate. People were a little like, whoa, what is this? Oh my God, it's too hard. But it had some sustainability. And I think that comes from the performance end of things of me getting on that floor, Vinny getting on that floor, who was my coach at that time, and just really making sure

that people left there feeling noticed, making sure you did a great job, you know, really things that are more important than just going in there and killing a workout. Yeah. And who were your customers at that time? I mean who were your typical was it like a super fit Woman between twenty five and forty?

It was probably women twenty five to fifty. It wasn't super fit because again, I wanted to really appeal. to, you know, uh like I said, my Pilates women, I had a variety of fitness levels. And that's where, you know, we really work from the front of the house, the front desk to the coaches, making the first workout, the first five workouts, you know, really down just walk. There no jogging. Don't jog. I know you can jog. Just walk a tick. Don't run. Don't yeah. Cause the m the key was making them successful. I knew that if they exited the front door going Uh oh. I can do that.

They'll come back. Our oldest member is 95 years old in Colorado, and you know, people can do the workout. And so that was Again, this was not yet orange theory. This was correct. And how long do you think it took you before you were like you could kinda breathe a sigh of relief and say, Okay, this is working, this gym is working, good, we got it going. It was probably a good year. A good year that, you know, we figured out how to really design these templates that, you know, we weren't killing people, but we were saying we, it was just you and this guy, Vinny. So there was Vinny, there was myself, and there was Casey who actually now owns my Ellen's Ultimate Workout studio. Oh.

Which still exists. Yes, absolutely. And uh the ultimate workout still exists and is done very busy there. So there were the three of us that were coaching classes. Alright, so you've got this going and it takes about a year before but then now you're kind of in a stable position. You are not sitting back and thinking, Okay, Ellen, Now am I gonna conquer the world. That was not what you were thinking.

Absolutely not. I was thrilled. I was like, oh my goodness, look what's happened. I literally started working out of a spare room in my house. I did this like little build over time and uh I have this great place that people love. I love going to. It's I was thrilled. Alright, so you've got this Jim that is pretty good, doing well and making a living. And I guess one of your

She mentions to you that her husband A guy named Jerome Kern. is like an expert in franchising and that you should meet him. What what do you remember about that? Correct. So she came to the front desk one day and she said, Ellen What's her name, by the way? Uh her name is April. April Curt. And she, you know, said, Look at this workout is crazy. It's wait list only. There was a wait list to get on. Yes. And so she said, you know, listen, my husband and his partner are in franchising. They were big in the massage MV world. He owned, you know, a whole region of massage MV and then Massage MV is like a massive massage franchise.

And his partner worked for the company, Dave Long. They partnered off and they created their own franchise company and they're looking at concepts. And she said, I told them about you. I said, You got to meet this woman that's got this thing going on over there. And Guy, really funny how the story goes. I remember exactly that moment and looking up at her and just the franchise word was very Frightening to me. It was the unknown. And I looked up at her and I said, April, you know, that's great, but I know nothing about franchising, you know. I don't think so. And she left.

Yeah. So what had happened was I went home and I'm like telling Nick and my sister and you know this is so crazy. This one of my clients came in and she's and they're like Uh Entertain it. Uh have a conversation. You know, if anyone could pull this off, you you probably could like get in there and give it a good run. And so uh she came in like the next day and we're talking and I said, you know what, why don't we connect? And Jerome ended up coming over with Dave, they took a class.

We sat down, had a conversation and I gotta tell you. I don't know much about partners in business because this was my first. But uh We decided to give it a shot.

When we come back in just a moment. Why Ellen decides to trust two strangers with her business and how it grows from one gym. Over a thousand. in only nine years. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. So it's 2009, 2010-ish, and to expand her business, Ellen has joined up with two franchising experts, Jerome Kern and Dave Long. They plan to open a pilot studio in Fort Lauderdale with the same concept as Ellen's ultimate workout.

But with different branding, starting with the colors. My room was red at Ellen's ultimate workout. So they said, you know, why are your walls all red and this and that? So colors to me represent energy and red is dramatic and intense. And so they said, Well, we don't want to copy that exactly. You've got your studio there, they said, and so we talked about colors and Orange is another very dynamic color that's about energy and all of these great things. And orange was like a close sister to the red. Yeah. And then I I don't know, I think it was Dave who came up with orange theory because of course the theory is you need to get your heart rate In that anaerobic zone twelve to twenty minutes, and that's how the name came about. So Orange Theory was gonna be the new name, and it was gonna be So Ellen's ultimate workout would s would remain, but Orange Theory would be spun out of that as a new brand. and you open the first location

Not too far from there in Port Lauderdale. It was in Fort Lauderdale. It's a good like twenty five minutes away. Was it right cl yeah. And How long did that take to build that out and Well, that was, you know, yeah, we had to figure out what does that mean? What does it look like? How big is that? What is the best footprint. So that was small. I think that might have been about was that twenty nine hundred or three thousand square feet. We started identical, the ten treadmills, ten rowers, ten, you know, weight stations, that type of thing to my studio. You know and then we had to start writing manuals. You know, basically the three of us are looking at each other and going, Okay, you know, how do we do this from the ground up? I mean they knew franchising, but

You know, if you're gonna duplicate this, you have to find ways that you're going to be able to do it and it not be about Ellen. So yeah, interestingly enough, in the early days, they basically said, just so you know. You can't Coach here. You can't show up a lot here. We have to prove our concept that this can be duplicated and it not be about Ellen. Right.

So That's what The challenge was I did make them put cameras in the studio because I wanted to see how the coaches were coaching it. So I did negotiate that. What I'm wondering is I mean Here you have this concept.

Without any any desire to franchise it, but then you had to people who knew how to franchise and saw in your concept an opportunity to franchise it. Rebranded it orange theory. And said let's do it. Try this, right? But how did you

protect yourself. Like how did you guys figure out 'Cause I'm imagining they were putting in some investment in it and they were gonna put in some money into it. How did you How did you make sure that you could still control it or own most of it or all of it, or I don't know. Oh yeah, I definitely got great counsel. And luckily I had I mean these gentlemen are just so Legit, it's not funny. I just was so fortunate to have

men who respect me every step of the way, who are, you know, supportive of me and my ideas. And you know, look, this is different as a woman coming in because like you say, you don't know what you're getting involved with with individuals that you don't know. And uh yeah, I lucked out. You were fifty f I I'm sorry I keep repeating your age at the time. I and I'm I'm just saying it because it's awesome. Like I want anyone to hear the story to understand that You can start a business at fifty five. Yeah. You can start a massive business. at fifty five or sixty. Like you can start a business that will become a billion dollar business. And

At the time. Did you ha a patent on this? Could you patent it this model or could any of it I mean, in theory, Dave and Jerome could have just taken the class and taken some pictures and been like let's just replicate this. Yeah, possibly. I mean actually some people tried to do that and it it just shouldn't like take off. Yeah. When I had it at Ellen, some people flew in and heard about, you know, this woman who's doing this workout and this and that. But um You know, uh gut wise I felt, you know, Jerome grew up in Buffalo, you know, right in my back yard, which was very I felt there were these signs. You know what I mean, guy? There were these signs that said, I don't know, I think like we're good. All right. So the orange theory gym opens.

And you're not really allowed to go there much because they want to see if it if it's gonna work. But presumably From day one the idea was let's franchise this concept of orange theory. It was. And look, we felt Even if we have one of these, two of these, three of these,

Let's just do the best we can with and if, you know, that's all we have, then we have three fitness studios we share together. I mean, I remember those kind of conversations amongst us, which I think are important as opposed to sitting around a conference table and going, you know, let's you know, these kind of bizarre expectations and you're maybe not paying attention to the important things. Alright, so you have this first gem. And The idea and it's amazing to me that's just 2010. Here we are in twenty twenty-three at the time of this recording, and we're talking about something just thirteen years ago.

But um one of the ideas, I guess, is to bring in technology, right? Your your concept exists. Your concept was there. It was like Get your heart rate to one of these three zones, right? Like you want to be between seventy and ninety percent of your maximum heart rate for most of the exercise, for most of the hour, right? Yep. And so the concept was there, but there was no you weren't like giving people heart rate monitors or measuring them. But these guys, your partners, they suggested let's bring this technology into the studio. Make that part of it. They did. They said, you know, listen, Ellen, you always talk about what you do not measure, you cannot improve. Yeah. What if we did that you know, legit with everyone having heart rate monitors. So at that time the only company out there was Polar that really was sure like you know doing it. I think right? Yeah. So we started with them and uh

The guys just really wanted to keep forging forward in this that they felt that here's a real unique path and lane for us to not only the workout that you created, but having this valuable information that our members could have in regard to heart rate response. Yeah. And who is up there like with Peloton, right, there's like leaderboards and you're kinda competing against other

Cyclists, this is different, right? You're not competing necessarily against the other people in your class. No. Our emphasis is competing against your last best performance. You know, you're only gonna have so many people that are always on that leaderboard. We offer that, we put that on there for some people who like that, but our emphasis is working against yourself. And the model is not a membership model. Oh it is, but but it's not like a you don't have to Sign it for a year. It's like a month to month thing. Correct.

Correct. Yeah, I'm curious because It's a very and depending on where it is, a an exercise gym can be very risky and isn't necessarily guaranteed to succeed. I mean I think lots of people listening have been to empty gyms right, you know, especially in in areas where there's a lot of saturation. I mean

Did anybody say you know? There are a lot of gym concepts out there, like there's bar, there's this, there's that. You know, this is just risky. We were told constantly, don't do this. Don't put your own money in this. Don't there's too much in fitness out there. Absolutely. We heard it over and over and over again. Yes. And that didn't scare you? You know what? Again, I think that They believed in me in regard to the work out.

And we just agree to reinvest, you know, we they still had business and massage envy. I still owned Ellen's ultimate workout. Yeah. So basically we agreed as partners to put Every bit of money coming in invested back into the company with heart rate monitoring and these types of things that would truly differentiate us. I think within eighteen months. There were twelve Orange Theory studios.

Were they all franchised? They were franchise, correct. And listen, in the beginning they you know, it i it was it was a lot to work out. We had one in Arizona, we had, you know, most of'em being built in Florida around us, which made it easier to control. Yeah. But From what I understand the first few franchise units did not actually perform well.

Like this was not going well initially. Like what w what was the problem? Were they just not Trained well. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it was, you know, do we have the right Partner. Uh, who is the franchisee and also, you know, some of our systems needed to be, you know, the three Ps, we say, are really what create great success in franchising. You have to have the right people, the right processes, and the right program.

Well, the right people is your franchisee, your staff, so on and so forth. The right program is like, again, the workout that I created. Well, the processes are the system, how you checking people in, how you following up with them. You know, those we needed to maybe tighten up a little. So we stopped franchising, we worked on our processes, we worked on the program, the training. type of thing, and then we reopened the franchising concept and that really worked well for us. Ellen, how did you guys I mean, you'd gone from running this one gym and teaching classes and then, you know, you had some employees and and so you were kind of overseeing, but Now

You've got a growing you know, even with ten or fifteen or twenty franchises that it grew very quickly. your role changes. Now you are in a corporate setting. You're a part of the corporate executive team. Tell me how you guys divided up responsibilities. Did Dave and Jerome focus on the business and operations end and you focused on the branding side and being the sort of a brand ambassador.

So the three of us each have these great strength in our lanes. So I consider myself like the artist. So the artist is the one I created, right? The art of the workout. Then we see like Dave Long as the manager. He manages the business. He's a CEO, and Jerome is without a doubt an entrepreneur a thousand percent. His concern is how do we open up ten more? Ten more, ten more. Yeah. But my intentions never changed from fifty years ago when I got in this business was I really had the desire to Offer great fitness to people. And then the other half of that was to Allow a

fitness environment that a fitness professional who wanted to work in it could make a decent living. Those were two things that I often found lacked in the fitness industry. And that's why a lot of people got out of, you know, getting into fitness. It was like a side job. It wasn't like a career. So I love the fact There's more and more fitness professionals now I'm giving work to. Yeah. How did you I mean, the growth of this business Just

exploded. Like you you opened the first location in two thousand ten. Right. By two thousand fourteen, so four years later, you've got almost eighty studios. Bite. Two thousand sixteen you have four hundred

Studios in six countries and forty states. I mean That pace just seems a Totally not. It's just such a m m huge, explosive growth. I think You know,

Did you U up until this point, your whole life you had a very clear way of living. You were teaching classes, you were running gyms It was one location, that's what you did. Now in your

Fifties. You completely change the way you Live and work and structure your time and your life. So How did you cope with that?

Yeah, it's a lot. And especially now, yeah, I'm sixty seven years old. So it's a type of thing where I guess because this came to me late guy in my fifties, I spent a many a decades living a certain way. So I'm not really living much different. I have the same friends, I have the same you know, circles, the same things that I do, this type of thing. If that makes any sense. Yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of I mean, there are some businesses that where the people start them when they're very young and they don't have any kids or a mortgage. There's some businesses, of course, people start when they have kids and they s make it work and then You started this, your kid was already older. He did didn't need you to like m pack his lunches anymore. Exactly. He living on his own. He co-owns four Orange Theory Studios. He lives in Tennessee. He's got three kids. He's yeah Let me ask you about Covid.

Right before Covet, I think you guys had about twelve hundred studios. In twenty two countries. What happened during COVID? Yeah, no, Covet is was horrible. We have fifteen hundred studios open and fifteen hundred studios closed.

That just was devastating. We pivoted as quickly as we could go to virtual. But that didn't really Cover it. We just needed to do what best we could for our members and for our franchisees, you know. That was of our greatest concern. But what did you do during that time? How did you I mean You guys were probably in crisis mode.

Was there ever a moment where you thought this is not gonna This isn't gonna survive. I don't think that. Um, luckily coming out of it. People do want to be in a studio concept or in a group concept. They don't wanna exercise in front of their TV, and uh we have found that since 2021, we've increased our member base by 51%, and we just feel by the end of this year, you know

We'll be back pre-Covid. Yeah. But it's very tough. It breaks our heart because you know our franchisees are our our business partners and there was a lot of struggle going on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Th this is I mean today I think you've got how many locations? About thirteen hundred? Fifteen hundred. Fifteen hundred. Okay.

twenty three countries. I mean it's it's just remarkable, right? And d this was not your intention or your goal or your expectation, but it made you rich like later in life. Which is probably, I have to imagine, totally unexpected. Totally unexpected. Absolutely. I I and I would even say that when I'm teaching glasses, I'm like, Okay, guys, let's make it through our seventies, eighties, and you know, hopefully maybe even ninety, you're still gonna see me here. But you know, what really excites me is this huge platform.

To be able to do what I had intentions doing. fifty years ago, and maybe then I was only doing it for, you know, the group of thirty women in my class or the spa that I managed to maybe had three hundred members to have like a million individuals who have been touched by this workout and have made their life better. Listen, does it get much better? Yeah. And by the way, do you ever teach classes anymore? You know, I I just stopped before COVID. I was coaching right up to before COVID, and then I just really haven't gone back to actually coaching. Um so Yeah.

And do you take the classes yourself regularly or yeah? Absolutely. Unfortunately, right now with the knee, I've got some things going on, but once I get my new knees. I'll be ready to go. And so how do you adjust? 'Cause I think that's a big market. I think I think there's a huge untapped market of people who

did run, did yoga, did pull out did stuff, and then had hip replacements in there. Fifties, sixties, seventies. And there's no one who's really it's like this physical therapy, but there's no classes that are geared towards people like that. Yes, I was just talking about this. You know, I talk about that ninety five year old woman in Colorado. Do you know that she joined mid Covid? The Colorado studio. And she sent me a picture with her mask on. She was taking class. I said

W how are you doing this, Betty? Tell me, explain. What was your thinking? And she goes I know. All about what goes on with the heart. And the lungs And I've gotta fight that now.

So why would I not do this? So it's just uh, you know, an attitude, and I'd love to get out there more with people to say, give it a try. Yeah. I wonder, Ellen, when you think about What happened.

'Cause this is only the last thirteen years of your life. Right. your life before, which was great. Like you've really built a great reputation and And then Life after.

And what happened the explosive growth of this concept. And all the wealth it created and jobs and all these things. How much of that do you attribute to to you your hard work, your Intelligence and how much do you think had to do with just

How lucky you got. You know, look, I definitely have been described as relentless and you know, I grab on a kind of a dog with a bone and you know You don't let go. I really don't, and that you know may come from way back at my father. So whatever I'm doing. And it can be a menial thing. I'm gonna do it at the best that I can do it. Yeah. I'm an intentional learner. I was just listening to a webinar on how heart rate responds when you're on a bike, how it responds when you're on a treadmill, how it responds when you're on a rower. Just the other day, you know, my uh design team laughs at me at corporate. They're like, Are you never stop, will you? So intentional learning I think absolutely being re uh lentless was a big part of

success I think that You know, many people are in jobs that they're miserable at, and what a a thing that I'll contribute to my father as well. When I was in high school I remember asking him, Gee Dad, I don't know what to do. What do you think I should be? What should I take in college? And he looked at me and said I don't care what you choose, I just want you to be passionate about it. He goes, Because when you're passionate about something you do, you will always find work. And you may find even a lot of money one day. Wasn't he

Brilliant with that advice way, way, way back then. That's Ellen Latham. creator and co-founder. Orange Theory Fitness. By the way, a few years ago, Ellen had the opportunity to honor her dad.

Art calandrelli. on the very football field where he spent much of his life coaching. He probably never made more than fifty thousand dollars a year and was the happiest man walking around day to day. And I was able to get the football field that he practice years and years and played games on named after my father. So it's now the Art Calandrelli Football Stadium. And I give two scholarships every year to football players that would need it to go to college, and that's probably a major thing I'm proud of.

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This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Ramtina Rablui. It was edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Sam Paulson and technicance from Patrick Murray. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, JC Howard, Carrie Thompson, Kiro Bakem, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Massini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.

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