#372: Julie Rice — Co-Founding SoulCycle, Taming Anxiety, and Mastering Difficult Conversations

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Check it out. This episode was recorded at the brand new first ever and gorgeous location of Made by We. WeWork's first on demand retail location, located in New York City's flat iron neighborhood. You will find all sorts of offerings and goodies at Made by We, including on demand work and meeting space. It is truly beautiful. You should check it out. Coffee and artisanal food by Bluestone Lane, a fully equipped market stand full of snacks, apparel, travel and office products, plus curated events, evening programming, that's what I was part of, and more. So if you want to try out We Work. If you want an alternative to working in your bedroom or at your home office, AKA kitchen table, or in coffee shops, this might be the easiest way to dip your toe in the water.

You can try it out by the hour or even by the minute instead of a monthly or ongoing membership. Check it out at madebywe.com. And full disclosure, I am an advisor to WeWork. I Julie Rice. Who's July? She's an entrepreneur best known for co founding the fitness phenomenon Soul Cycle.

Rice served as co-CEO at SoulCycle from 2006 to 2015. Before joining WeWork in November 2017 as a partner. Rice's life's work has been about building community. At WeWork, Rice is approaching everything through the lens of community. She's focusing on WeWork's brand and the experience WeWork provides its members and seeking new and innovative ways to grow and share the WeWork experience around the globe. Explore is

details and tactics related to that. Rice lives here in New York City with her husband Spencer and their two daughters. She is a board member of the Public Theater and Weight Watchers. As well as an advisor to the women's club. the wing. You can find her on social media, Instagram at July Rice. Underscore. Trick.

Hatch of the race underscore. And on LinkedIn. As July Rice. Welcome to the show and thank you for being here. Oh thank you for coming to visit us. Although this is your home, so thanks for having us. Thank you for coming to visit us.

And uh we're gonna Jump all over uh chronologically, which is my my habit. I try to turn that bug into a feature. We'll see how I do. And uh Flashback to childhood. So were you a well behaved child or do you have any memories of

Misbehaving, getting in trouble. Actually. I was the kid that didn't have a curfew because I actually called my parents before it was time to come home to let them know when I would be home. Um but I did get in trouble once in a very big way and um I will tell you what happened. I decided I wanted to get a second piercing in my ear, and my mother said absolutely not. I was eleven years old and that was completely inappropriate to have a second piercing in your ear. And I had one friend, she was my most rebellious friend. Her name was Laura, and we decided to take the bus to the White Plains Galleria Mall. And we were gonna get our ear pierced anyway. And so we did. We took the bus and she convinced me that it was no big deal and my mom wouldn't even see it. So I just came home and I put my thing over my hair.

And you know, my mom actually did notice it. And so I told her you know what, I actually don't even think she noticed it. I was actually such a nerd, I told her. you know, I couldn't do it for more than five minutes without telling her that I got my ear pierced. So I um I admitted that I got my ear pierced and my mom decided that a great punishment for me, well, first she called the woman who pierced my ear to explain that you actually couldn't, you know, put holes in the body of minors without their parental consent. And the woman didn't seem to really care that my mom thought that and she said, Well if you don't like it then you should sue me. So my mom decided that she would. Um I'm not only gonna teach my daughter a lesson. Yes. She decided that she was gonna sue her for eight dollars and ninety-nine cents, the uh entire contents of my piggy bank that I took to get my ear pierced, and that I was going to have to take the stand Yes, and that's exactly what happened with my punishment. My mom went to the uh library and she was her own lawyer and she figured out that yes, in fact you could not pierce the body of a minor without parental consent.

And then I had to go to court and get up on the stand as the most terrified eleven year old that you have ever seen to tell them that yes, I had disobeyed my parents and gone to the gallery amall and gotten a second piercing. Oh Mom. So what did your parents uh do professionally? Um, my dad was a phys ed teacher and my mom um was um she had actually an antique business. When people move from homes or estates, she appraises the contents and sells them off. She's kind of like an art historian. Mm. And you you said white plants, so where did you grow up?

I grew up in Westchester in New York. Westchester. All right. To A year

before Soul Cycle. Could you paint a picture for us? Where are you? What's going on in life? Yes. Um so I have had this is just about my third career. I started out, um my first career was I worked in the movie business. As a kid, I had always been obsessed with theater, with musical theater. That was always kind of my thing. I loved entertainment and I always wanted to figure out a way to work in the movie business and I remember coming home, you know, my sophomore year of college and saying to my dad who was a gym teacher and my mom who worked in an antique business, like, don't you people know anybody, I need an internship somewhere, this is never gonna happen for me unless we know somebody.

Um and my dad recalled that he had worked with some woman whose husband ran a kids talent agency, cut to I got some internship, and long story short, I I did find my way into um the movie business and I worked in New York for about eight years as a commercial agent and then I kind of figured out that if I really wanted to go to the next place in my life, I would need to go to California. And so I went to LA and I became a manager in Los Angeles. And I did that for about ten years. And

After ten years I kind of l flash forwarded ahead to what people's lives looked like, you know, in the entertainment business, servicing clients all the time kind of you know, really being, you know, a prisoner to a lifestyle of servicing people. And although I loved artists, which is what I was always in it for, um I really thought to myself, like I'm kind of ready to go back to the East Coast, I'm kind of ready to make a change. And I came back to the East Coast and I Uh my husband and I both went into our offices on the same day at the time. I I met my My husband in Los Angeles. He was an agent at William Morris and I was working for a management company. And we decided we were gonna, you know, head off for sort of nobler professions and head back to the east coast to keep it real.

And we got up one morning and we lived in Malibu at the time. It was sort of like our swan song. We decided to move to Malibu on the beach'cause we knew we were gonna head out of the West Coast. And we got up one morning and we said, Okay, today's the day, like we're both gonna go quit our jobs and we're gonna tell everybody goodbye and like we're going back to the east coast and My husband and I we left that morning and he came home and I came home at the end of the day and we said, How to go? And he said, Oh yeah, everybody said, You know, great job, thanks a lot, whatever and You know, I'm all I'm all good. And I said, Oh well, they told me that they were gonna move my assistant a month ahead of me and that I should take a month on the road and then I could do this in New York if I wanted to, and then I started thinking, like, how are we gonna pay our rent? So I kept my job. So basically the picture was that I came back to New York. And I was running a New York office.

for um the agency that I'd worked for in Los Angeles. And I was still working in the movie business and I was, you know Really Um You know, having a better time doing it here, but definitely beginning to think about kind of what's next. I mean, I'd been thinking about what was next already when I was thinking about leaving the West Coast.

The one thing that was really going on for me here in New York was that In LA, you know, so much of my life had been tied up in lifestyle pursuit. You know, I went hiking with my friends, I belonged to a running club, we lived at the beach. And when I came back to New York, there was just nothing here that was lifestyle. Fitness was really about going to a big box gym, burning calories, having somebody yell at you about, you know, were you beating the person next to you? Could you push harder? You know, how could you, you know, get it done quicker and more efficiently. And you know, it's interesting, cut to two thousand and six, you know, there was no green juice in this city, there was no boutique fitness, there were a couple of yoga studios, but certainly what's going on today was not what was going on. you know, in two thousand and six in New York. And so for me, there was a real void, um, even though I was desperate to come back to the East Coast and be with my family, um, there certainly was a void in

what I had experienced in Los Angeles in terms of lifestyle. So I wanna talk about About just for a moment. Managing talent. So what is what does a manager do?

And based on what you just said, which uh well you said several things, but w one of which was They said Great, we'll give you a bunch of time off. And you can then pick up with your job. You

I would imagine we're good at that job. Uh So what does it manager do and what were some of your better bets? or better decisions as a manager. Sure. Um so a manager

You know, an agent is responsible for getting actors jobs, and a publicist is responsible for making sure that people know about those jobs. And a lawyer is making sure they're making that they don't get screwed over in the contracts for those jobs. And kind of what a manager does is think about big picture. You really think about Who that person is, who they want to be in the world. What I learned actually from being a manager is you're really thinking about creating a brand for a person. You know, what is that person's brand? You know, what does it s how do they walk through the world, what do they stand for? You know, what do people think about when, you know, when they think about an actor or an actress, everything from their fashion to the things that they endorse to, you know, the way that they talk in interviews and really thinking in terms of, you know, how do I plan a career.

And uh When you get to LA or got to LA. You transition to this This job as a manager. Were there any uh

Any particular winds or Uh finds from the perspective of talent people you chose to work with or ended up working with that come to c that come to mind. If you can talk about them. I definitely can. Well I will definitely say that I think that um you know one of my sort of better skills in life is picking people. I'm a very good people picker. I think I I mean I I've I've just about the greatest husband. Um I chose a fantastic business partner.

Um and I feel actually very lucky in my life with my friends and the people that are around me are all dynamic and really feed me and you know, in in very specific ways, but I've always been a good people picker and I and I l I genuinely love people and what I really love is I love the nuances that make people the people that they are. And um, you know, those little things about people that are special are things that I feel like I can really see. And something that I love doing in the world is trying to help figure out how to connect the world to the things that are special about those people. And so I I've had good luck all along, you know, early on in my career, I Ellen Pompeo was a bartender that wouldn't give me a drink. Um and when I finally gave her my card and her boyfriend found it in the laundry a couple months later, she called me and and we had quite a good run. Um I worked with Selma Blair for a while. I worked with with Justin Long

Um, and then when I was um in Hollywood, I worked on the teams of people. Uh I worked for a bigger company, but I worked on the teams for people like Jennifer Lopez. Um and Sean Combs and Will Smith and I mean those were not necessarily people that I found, but I was actually really lucky to be a part of those teams because I worked for somebody Um, a guy named Benny Medina, who's like a very famous uh talent manager. He's created a lot of incredible artists, and really he was one of the first people that really thought about how you create artists into brands. He would take somebody like Jennifer Lopez and think, How can we release an album on the same day as we release a movie on the same day as we put a fragrance into the world. And I think that was pretty early thinking back then in terms of three sixty thinking about how you could turn a person into a company. Let's let's flash back to Ellen who you mentioned.

Bartender. Bartender. What did you see because now As as Context for me as well as people who are listening.

Do do the most successful Iconic managers have Five clients, fifty clients, a hundred clients What what does that tend to look like in terms of the number of people you work with? And then what did you see in Allen? Sure. So it's when you're starting out, you know, it's it's much more, you know, you're you're betting and you're betting on on more people, right? So usually in the beginning you start with about twenty five or thirty people. You're you know, first of all your ability to sign, you know, you're not going you're not you know, me at twenty five in the world saying to J Lo, like, hey, come on with me, you know, that's not happening. So um you know, you're you're you're trying to identify talent, you're trying to find people that you think are going to have trajectory, and you're usually signing between twenty and twenty five of them and then watching their, you know, how their different careers are advancing.

As your clients become more successful, what winds up happening is you personally handle less people because now you're really building companies. And if things are going great, you're actually producing things, you're looking for properties for them, you know, you're really overseeing pretty much every decision for them. And so you're probably at that point handling between if they're mega stars, you're having between one and three. If they're big stars, you're having between three and five. You know, and if you have a bunch of people on, you know TV series and other things, you know, I'm gonna say that once you're once your clients are successful, you don't have more than 10 that you're personally handling. You might have a team of people below you that are handling a bunch and you're kind of saying like yes to that, no to that, whatever, but you're hands-on with I'm gonna say between three and five. And what do you see in Ellen? What what made you think and the reason I'm asking this just for people who are wondering, why is he drilling so deeply on this?

is that whether you think of yourselves as investors or not You're all investors in the sense that you are allocating your hours, you're allocating your attention. And so in a way, her choosing clients is putting together an investment portfolio. I mean you're

Placing bets and you have a finite number of bets you can place. So why why Ellen? What did you what did you see? You know, I I saw in Ellen, interestingly enough, what I ultimately wound up looking for in Soul Cycle instructors, what I ultimately look for in employees, and what I actually do ultimately look for in entrepreneurs, which is You know, there was something about her that made me want to know her. That made me want to understand what she was thinking, what she was gonna be doing. You know, when I when I when I used to audition Soul Cycle Instructors, I would say the main criteria that I had for a soul cycle instructor was do I want to have a whole meal with you? You know, I'm talking about an appetizer, an entree, and dessert, and I'm still not bored of you. Um, you know, really, you know, how do you connect to people?

And you know, watching her there was something that was There was something that was just fascinating about her. There was something that was really deep that I wanted her to tell me. And I think that's really interesting. I think that, you know, there are certain kinds of people that you really want to lean into. And whenever I sort of have that instinct, when my body kinda wants to lean into somebody to know a little bit more. I I genuinely know that that's a person that I need to sort of surround myself with because there's something about that person that is, you know, interesting for me. So

We're back into Soul Cycle Land, which is perfect. Uh When did SoulCycle become something real in the sense that there was a concrete Action of some type. Of taking it from in the head.

to into the world in some way. Ha ha Right. That's what actually you know. Separates the boys from the men, right? I always say e everybody's got an idea tucked away somewhere. I was working in New York. I was still working in the talent business and I was taking classes at many different gyms, just sort of trying to find something

that you know fulfill me in terms of exercise. I'm a anxious person, exercise is a real must for me in my life to sort of keep myself and everybody around me in, you know, in good spirits. Um and I I just couldn't find anything that was enjoyable. And I kept thinking to myself, like, this could be different, this could be fun, this could make you feel good. Um and I was taking classes with an indoor cycling instructor at a gym and I I became friendly with her and I just kept saying all those things to her. And finally um she said to me, you know, there's a woman that takes some classes with me at another gym, and she's been saying the same thing to me. Um you guys should meet for lunch.

Um and so she connected me with my uh business partner who's right there and my other s my my other soulmate, as I like to say. And We had lunch one day, and it was really the craziest thing. I mean, it's a hard story to believe because we met for lunch. Um we had a a couple hour lunch. It was In the winter and it was um

I was at Soho House here in New York, and and we had lunch, and it was crazy. It was like we had the same exact idea and we were just completing each other's sentences. And when I left lunch that day, um, before I even got in my cab, my cell phang, and it was Elizabeth, and she said to me, um You know, I'm gonna look for real estate and you look at towels and I'll call you on Thursday. And I thought, wow, like that's amazing. I mean I still had a job and you know whatever. And sure enough, like she called me on Thursday and she said I found something on Craigslist. She said it's uh twelve hundred square foot. Uh sublet of an old dance studio. We could take a five year sublet, and you should meet me tomorrow on seventy second street. And I went. And four months later we opened. How were you doing on the towels? She like So how are you doing on the towels? So it's really interesting actually, in case anybody wants to start a business.

It turns out that when you have a twelve hundred square foot studio and you don't actually have laundry facilities, what you do is you rent towels and somebody picks them up and takes them away every day and launders them. And I learned that on Google and I I dutifully brought my towel report that day as she was signing the lease for our Craigslist dance studio N you you based on just the reading that I've done in preparation for this, uh, made uh Beats um in retrospect would seem to be very important decisions. Uh one of them was uh deferring or minimizing payment to yourselves, it seems. Uh and I I read about maybe you could talk about the

I think it was what these every Sunday Two hundred dollars. A TM maybe we can talk about that, but Uh could you explain the rationale behind that? And uh could you elaborate on the

the weekly ritual with the ATM. Definitely. Um So When we started Soul Cycle, I um you know I actually like I had a good job, I was making real money and you know, it it was really the first time I actually that I ever thought about my time as money because I was sort of giving up a salary now and

you know, I was gonna be using all my time, but wasn't gonna necessarily be taking I took I took a small salary because at the time that's what we needed to do. But um My husband was working, luckily, and he was supporting us, uh, but We had a five month old baby and we moved into a rent control apartment. Um we paid a little less than a thousand dollars a month. We lived on seventy first street over Harry's Burritos. And I had a five month old baby um who's in the front row. She's not such a baby. What what are you wearing?

Uh yeah, so so what we decided was that we were um you know we were gonna make sacrifices so that we could start this business. Uh, Spencer, my husband, would go to the cash machine on Sunday nights and he would take out four hundred dollars. We decided that when we started the business, we were gonna give our credit cards up and we were gonna put ourselves on like a real budget, which we hadn't really done before. We were Two people with no kids and two salaries and you know, we weren't making tons of money, but we certainly had enough that we could each go to Starbucks and take cabs and go out for dinner and not think about a vacation. Um and so Spencer would give us a white envelope, each of us on Sunday nights, we each got two hundred dollars and that was our money for the week. And when the two hundred dollars was gone, that was each of us meaning he got one. He got two hundred bucks and I got two hundred bucks. And I will tell you, with with a child in New York City, two hundred dollars does not go that far. So it was like, you know, a lot of strollers on the crosstown bus, you know, not a lot of Starbucks

Um but that's what we did and You know It actually you know, I I think that one of the really interesting things about, you know really believing in what you're doing and being so passionate about an idea and really believing that something should be born was it was hard. And you know, I remember clamping my finger in that stroller a million times and cursing on that bus, but it didn't really feel like that big of a sacrifice. I mean we were happy.

Um and we Elizabeth and I were were loving what we were doing and we did it. And you know, we lived in we lived in one room. And you know when We wanted to watch TV, we rolled the crib into our bedroom and we wanted to go to sleep. We rolled the crib back out into the living room and that's what we did. Yeah, and I was um Thank you for painting a picture because I I think it

And you already said sort of anxious by Uh so it doesn't strike me as the perfect time to necessarily start a company. Uh in and and Just with the five months.

Uh year old kid and Five month year old kid, so is that what they say? It's sorry, I guess for the Brits in the audience, that's that's that's American, that's Yankspeak. Uh It it it I think just highlights the fact that if if you really have something you want to do and feel is important, there's very rarely gonna be a perfect convenient time. To do it.

You know, it was such a gift that it happened so quickly. Um I I I talk a lot about Elizabeth, my business partner, sort of being a great entrepreneur and me being a really hard worker. Um, and I think that's part of what makes us such great partners. Elizabeth's an incredibly good risk taker. I always say Elizabeth's like a total baller and I'm just sort of running behind trying to work really hard. But the truth is that I think because she was such a good risk taker, because she's so good at moving the ball forward, it all happened so quickly. I didn't actually have time to be anxious or think, oh, I'm giving up my job and what's gonna happen. It was just like

We met on Tuesday, we saw the place on Thursday, we went across the street to Starbucks, we wrote on a napkin, which you know we still have framed. It says, you know, if we could see a hundred people a day, you know, at twenty seven dollars a bike, we're gonna have enough money to pay for some babysitters. We both had young kids at the time. We're gonna be able to pay our studio staff. We're gonna be able to take a little bit out of the business to justify the fact that we're not raising our own kids for the next decade. And and that was our business model on the back of that Starbucks napkin. And the truth is It happened quickly and we just got into action mode so quick that we didn't have a lot of time to obsess about what if, what if, what if. Like we just had to make it happen every day. What names what other names were candidates for the business besides Soul Cycle.

Or the was that just like a lightning bolt from the sky and that was it. Did you guys Um that was a lightning bolt to Elizabeth's husband in the shower one day. Um it was not a lightning bolt to either of us, but Uh you know, we thought of you know, we thought of a bunch of different names. You know, at the time, again, there was no boutique fitness in New York City, and so we felt like we needed something sort of descriptive about the cycling part of it in the name. So we thought about cycle NYC. You know, we we definitely had a lot of cycle in the name in the different other names because we felt we needed to be somewhat specific for people. Then you land it on Soul Cycle. How did you decide on the business model?

Uh so n not just say the technology and the ambiance and all these other elements that made it different, but how did you dis how did you both think about Developing. The the business model. So it's it's interesting. Um I think that

You know, again, а тайм на ландская. You know, in New York City there were big box gyms. And the model that was profitable was you went in, you gave somebody your credit card. they took an imprint of it and then they just hope that you never came. Because the best thing that could happen was that they could double or triple book your spot when they were figuring out their utilization and rather than take four hundred members, they could have eight hundred members or even better. Both of those people didn't show up and they could have twelve hundred members. And so For us, you know, we

we really um we really began to think about it in a different way. And I think a lot of it, you know, has had to do also with with our idea that we were task ourselves to create a really special experience every time, you know, to the point of being a theater lover and thinking about things in terms of a production. We used to always say that every time somebody crossed the threshold at SoulCycle, it was curtain up. And until they left it was curtained down because we were only as good as their last experience. When we decided on a pay per class model, everybody thought that we were crazy. Like why wouldn't you just take people's credit cards? Why wouldn't you just charge them? And for us, it was a challenge to everybody there, from the people at the front desk to know your name. to the instructor in that room to deliver a certain kind of experience. to us to make sure that the brand was delivering a message and continuing to innovate. And we just really felt like we wanted to challenge ourselves in that kind of way. We wanted to deliver that kind of experience every time.

Were there any other early decisions? That proved either particularly Important slash good or particularly bad. There were many decisions that uh that prove that proved both of those things. Um let's talk about the good ones first.

I I think that um you know when we started SoulCycle there were there were quite a few things that even though um our business model on the Starbucks napkin might not seem sophisticated, I think that we were um we we were smarter than we thought that we were and we thought about a few different things. We thought about technology. We thought about the fact that at the time you had to go to the gym an hour early to put your name on a paper list and sign up for a class that was only gonna be 45 minutes long. So your gym experience now turned into two hours plus for 45 minutes worth of exercise. And so we created the first online reservation system. Um, we thought about brand a lot. We thought about creating something. We never thought about Soul Cycle like we're creating a gym. You know, for us our muses were things like the White Cube, you know, the art the um art gallery in London or an Apple store. We always thought about ourselves in a much different way and to creating a brand than you know, we never compared If we could create a brand, if we could set a stage, if we could create a place where people felt safe and empowered and like they could share with other people, if we could set that stage and create that for people, then they could have a different experience than they could have in an environment that

wasn't like that. We also really thought about community and we thought about, you know, how do we create a place where people support each other. You know, so much of what was going on at gyms was competition between people. And for us it was all about You know, some days I'm not gonna feel like exercising, but like if you can bring it for me on Monday and I can bring it for you on Wednesday and we can all raise each other up, what does that kind of a place feel like? As as co participants. Correct. Correct. And you know, there were a lot of little decisions that we made along the way, you know. And things also that just happened to us in a lucky way. We started out with thirty five bikes in the room. We got popular before we could find a second space, so we ended up with forty-five bikes in the room. And what did that do? It put the bikes this close to each other. And when people were done complaining about can you believe they're gonna charge twenty-seven dollars and I'm gonna have to sit that close to somebody? What actually happened was the lights were dark and people could all feel the music at the same time and you could almost feel some of the things that you're gonna somebody breathing next to you and your foot was on the same beat as their foot was on, and all of a sudden it became connected and it became tribal and it was dark and there were candles and the music was amazing and an instructor is telling you that you could be more than you thought you could be.

And somehow the room is moving together in a way that you you don't often feel connected to people like that. Even when you're having deep conversation, there's something about a moving meditation with other people that are rooting for you, that are holding space for you, that aren't there to compete with you, that are there to elevate you so that they can be elevated as well. And when we created an experience like that, it was magic. I mean it was really magic. And um, you know, that is kind of Was it was a really transformational thing for people. It's it's really remarkable, among other things, that that you two are still Close.

In the sense that a lot of Co founders. a blow to smithereens at some point. Like they get speed wobbles maybe because company's growing really quickly. They might not have the important conversations up front that they should have. There are a million and one reasons why a lot of these relationships don't work out. Uh I don't know if this factors in, but

Could you talk to Coaching. uh or advisors. uh and uh if if and how you've you've utilized

to to help you guys. Develop and maintain. uh close bonds and ability to work together. Definitely. Um

So Um early on in our um business life Elizabeth and I um started to see a coach and the way that that happened was we had a third business partner in the beginning and that was um we quickly found out that you know that partnership was not necessarily gonna work. And We realized, you know, as that partnership was crumbling, that it takes work to make good partnerships. Um, something that I've

I've worked on my marriage, something that, you know, is no longer a secret to me that people actually need skills and tools to be in relationships with other people. You know, I there are plenty of people that are in relationships that are Fine, but if you really want to have great relationships, that's actually a particular skill set, right? And so Elizabeth, um And picture I don't really know Elizabeth very well at this point. I mean, we're about a year into business, you know, we met at this lunch, we decided like let's just go for it. I mean, you know, we're still we're still pretty much strangers. And you know, Elizabeth, you know, while I was in LA growing a career, Elizabeth's in Colorado, she goes to University of Boulder. Um, she spends her time in Telluride. She is like a much more sort of evolved spiritual, you know. at peace with the world person than I am. I'm still like I've only lived on the coasts, you know. I've only done that grind.

Um so Elizabeth calls me in the middle of the night and she says, um, you know, I've Googled Life Coach NYC. I've realized she's having a nervous breakdown because she realizes that our business is taking off, our third partner has walked, you know, we've got to get rid of our third partner who's completely toxic, and now it's like what's gonna happen here. And we both have little kids at home, and you know, the worst thing that's happening is that our business is becoming such a success that like we're gonna have to, you know put our foot on the gas here. And so she says she's um she's Googleed Life Coach NYC and then I should meet her tomorrow, um at somewhere some location around Grammercy because we're gonna meet with the coach. And I'm thinking I hang off the phone and I say to my husband, like, this woman is batshit crazy. Like there is no way, like I have to work tomorrow. There's no way I'm getting myself in a cab going All the way downtown to go to some hotel and sit with some life coach NYC. Like I'm thinking we're sitting with Dion Warwick and she is gonna tell us. You know what I mean?

But sure enough, I mean we get there and you know, we start to talk to our coach, who by the way we still work with today. We I don't There are so many decisions in my life and our life that we wouldn't make without her and Um I met with a woman, her name is Meredith Haberfield. She has an incredible company called Think Human.

And um We started to talk about, you know, what it what it's like to be good partners and you know, what it takes to make decisions together and like any relationship, you know, you're two people that have a common vision but are in very different moments in your life at all times. And a business relationship is no different. I mean there are times that like I need money and you don't, or you know, I w I need to slow down for a minute because something's going on in the life of my family and you want to put your foot on the gas or whatever. And Or there's just things that you want to do with the business. I'm ready to sell the business and you're not. You know, how does what does that all look like? And

And everything along the way, from learning how to be the only two employees in a company to managing twenty five hundred employees, and what do you look like as leaders, and how do you communicate. with your employees. And so we've started down this journey with Meredith, our therapist coach, life coach NYC. I really think she's changed her website since then. You know, we've we've we've worked with her for a long time now, ten years, and I will I will say that she taught us lessons that helped inform the entire way that the culture of our company would exist. You know, we would learn how to have a conversation with each other and then we would Take those skills and we would codify them. We had an incredible chief culture officer and we'd work on them. We'd learn how those skills, and then we'd bring her in to learn that skill, and then we'd codify it, and we would teach the entire organization how to communicate like that. Um, and we did that until we created a really extensive library of tools that we use to build a culture. And what was amazing was and you know, I know that you speak to so many founders that have spoken businesses that have started businesses, but I really do believe that, you know

Just like the way that I was saying to you, like the nuances of people, what makes them special are just just so intricate and so interesting. I really think that the nuances of great businesses come from the DNA of their founders. You know, it's those very things that make those people special, that ultimately make those companies so special. But the problem is, right, after it goes from two two employees to two thousand employees, how do you take that DNA and keep it in a place that's really what it was meant to be? And I will say that finding that coach was So lucky not only for me personally, I can honestly say that it is has changed who I am as a human being and who I ever would have been able to be as a leader. Um but It also allowed us to scale this kind of stuff into our culture, which was incredible for our employees. I mean, we gave them tools like, you know, how to get unstuck, which was really just teaching them how to have a conversation about what was bothering them and to create spaces where they could have those conversations and not feel.

Like people were gonna judge them or, you know, reward them or punish them for what they were saying, you know. We had an expression sort of, you know, saying, No lumpy carpets. We created a you know, an ethos where it was You know, you had to communicate with your co worker if something was bothering you. And we created a space where you could have those conversations, and we taught people not only how to express themselves, but also how to listen. Okay, there's so much time pack. So the The tools that you developed or were able to learn from your coach

our our one set of questions that I'll get to. But let me start with going from oh my God, we're gonna be talking to a psychic, get me out of here, I'm busy to working with someone for ten years Were you sold in the first meeting? And if so, why? What did she do, not do ask? Not asking. Exude.

That that sold you. Well here was what was so interesting about you know our meeting. I mean, first of all, it was definitely one of those lean in moments. You know, I had never really met somebody who had such different life experience than me and was so different than me and yet saw it all the same. Um Elizabeth and I have

such completely different things that we bring to our partnership and relationship, and yet at the end of the day, we have a really common vision. And I I think that that's really, um that that's really what drew me to her. And in in the case of Meredith specifically. D how did she overcome your skepticism about that use of time?

Uh well, first of all, she's just completely cool and normal. Like if she was here with us, she would just be You know. Right. Us. You know what I mean? Like she's she's super she's just she's just and she's just real. You know, there's There's no bullshit it's like she will call you on it and she asks you really hard questions. You know, you'll sit there and defend something for fifteen minutes, well that's not how I see it and that's not how I want it. And the yeah, but that's the da. And then she'll say to you, That's all great. Here's what I want you to think about. And you don't have to answer it now. She'll say to you something like this.

At the end of your life. When you look back on this. Who do you want to have been? How do you want people to have thought of you? And you'll just go, wow. Cause that's some different shit than what I was about defending right now. Wow, that's way different than being right in this room right now. You know, when I think back to the end of my life.

And I think back about the way that I want people to have thought of me, or have listened to people, or have taken a moment to consider somebody else's feelings or point of view, or put myself in their shoes. I mean that's some different stuff than being right in the moment and You know, when somebody asks you a question like that, you know. You stop. And it's always questions like that, or or it's questions and a lot of times it's just you and yourself. And she'll just ask you questions like, you know About why you're doing things. You know, is it about your ego? Is it about the way other people think about you? Is it because you need more money? You know, questions that you

А доно, а в нафворк он місел. To ask to really Ask myself those questions. I'm really good still at at talking myself into the things that I want to hear. Getting unstuck if if I'm getting that right.

Uh no lumpy carpets. No lumps in the carbon, I might be getting the phrasing wrong. Or uh managing these what could be very uncomfortable conversations with a partner. About

wanting to sell when someone else doesn't want to sell, or whatever the conversation might be, right? It seems like a lot of those tools and whether it's for employees, Or for the two of you. is about having uncomfortable conversations successfully and managing conflict. Are there any uh specific

Recommendations. Or examples that you could give of how to approach Say The

the employee who has something that is bothering them about a co worker And kind of walking them through how to do that in a way that doesn't lead to World War Three. Well

You know, first of all, I think that you know, for better or for worse, I think that you know Company culture also has a lot to do with it. I think they're creating environments where it's safe for people to do those things. You know, there's so there's so much politicking and, you know, things that still go on in many places where, you know, that sort of You know. You have to actually reward that behavior. You know, I I do think that that is something that is um

You know. it has to be considered. But what I will say is that You know, I I do think that having those conversations and beginning to have those conversations really start with Teaching people how to listen first.

You know, I think that training people how to to listen to what somebody else has to say. Um allows people who then have issues to go and be heard. Um I will tell you about um something actually great that my husband and I have done for a long time, which actually changed the dynamic of our relationship. And I can honestly say that it's, you know, if I if I had to say sort of the other best thing that I've ever done is um, you know, we had our first daughter and all of a sudden we were no longer two people that could just do what they wanted whenever they wanted. You know, if we both wanted to go to take different exercise classes at different gym at the same time, well, somebody had to stay home with our kid and that began to create conflict. You know, we no longer had the time that we used to have to ourselves. We no longer had the autonomy. It's you know, it's different, you know, when you're when you have a child. And so

You know, we had we'd started arguing and we had started um, you know having all this conflict and My husband, who happens to be um a much more evolved person than I am and a much better communicator, um, said you know, well, maybe you should go talk to somebody and we started to go to some couples counseling and see different marital people, you know, on a hunt for some solution to this and You know, when we were in the room with couples counselors and therapists, we know we would basically were two like really smart people, so we would just play the win the therapist game. You know, so we'd s we'd we'd spend a couple hundred bucks an hour trying to figure out who was gonna actually win that day. Um And then

Finally, um, you know, we quit the couple's therapy and because I decided that our therapist liked him better. Um And then finally Um You know, Spencer was seeing um a therapist on his own, and she said she had given him a suggestion and she said, you know, you should read this book, and it's called Getting the Love That You Want. And he brought it home one day and he started to read it. And he would say to me, Like, You've got to read this. This book is really amazing. And before he was through the book, he had gone out and bought a copy for me and said, Like, we should read this together.

And so we started to read this book. And before we were done with the book, we had actually signed up for the workshop. Um, and I bring this up because this is actually a technique that we have learned that you can use with your employees, you can use with your children, you can kind of use with anybody, but We went to this workshop. It was probably the most important forty hours of our of our marriage up until that point. And It is these two

Older therapists called um Harville Hendricks and Helen Hunt, and here's what's so fascinating. They um Harville was The first person to win Oprah, a daytime Emmy. He's this amazing older therapist who had studied relationships for a long time and was becoming very prominent. And his wife was also a research professor that was studying relationships in the brain. And she's She's learning all these things about the brain and cortisol levels and he's winning daytime Emmys and they're both on their second marriages and they're actually about to get divorced while they're all winning all these awards and stuff. And you go and take the seminar and cut to this.

50% of first marriages end up in divorce, 70% of second marriages end up in divorce, and about 90% of third marriages do. Teaching you that it has not much to do with the partner that you choose, but mostly the skill set that you bring to the relationship, right? And so here's the crazy thing, you know, nobody teaches us how to be married. Nobody teaches us how to communicate with a partner, nobody teaches us how to communicate with anybody. You know, I don't remember being in a class in school where somebody said to me, you know, this is how you listen, this is how you talk to somebody, this is how you consider what they're saying. And really, all you do in this workshop. is you learn active listening, you know

We learned how to um to make appointments with each other to have conversations so that you're not bombarding somebody at a time where they can't hear you. When you make an appointment and you say it's your turn to talk, basically, you know, I say You know, I Say what I need to say, and then all that person gets to do is repeat back to you and say, Is there more? That's it. That's all the person gets to do. And then you well you know what? There always is more. And then you say what more there is, and then they get to repeat it back, and then they get to say, Is there more? And you know what happens at the end of three Is There Mores?

Rather than trying to win the therapist and rather than trying to be right. what you realize is that somebody is suffering about something and that it's coming from a source of pain, not coming from a source of like at you And it's not about you being right, it's about taking care of somebody that you love, or taking care of somebody that you work with, or hearing a child that's coming home from a school that didn't have a good day or got a bad grade that's feeling disappointed also. And I think really, um, you know, teaching people how to listen and how to have conversations is something that's so important. Thank you. Very specific. Are are there other examples of ways you've brought things from that workshop or

Fuck. Uh Aside from the the specific examples that you just gave in terms of active listening. Are there any other tools or

Habits that you've Adopted or found useful. There are actually many others, um I think that one is really the one that it's it's really the focus of the workshop and what you do

you know, more au most often, but there are a lot of amazing practices, you know, telling people what's great about them. I mean, how often do you, you know, do you think about something that's wonderful about your partner and make sure that you share that every day? How often do you make time to be proactive about doing something nice? Again, whether it's for a spouse, whether it's for a child, whether it's for a couple colleague. I think there are a lot of incredible things that happen out of that workshop, but I but I will say that, you know, the foundation of it is really learning to listen. So you have in you mentioned. That I think and I'm paraphrasing here, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but but the

You see founders with certain DNA, certain superpowers, and that sort of infuses and informs the organization. Uh And I think it's at least been my experience observing and being involved with a lot of companies that also if there is

Acute dysfunction. In a founder. that that can also sort of infuse its way into a company. So I I so I'm mentioning that just to say that the the culture, which we take to be like a shared set of beliefs and behaviors, at least that's how I think of it, does not just take care of itself. And part of that is doing the work.

That That you guys have done. as founders both separately and and together. Are there any other Whether it's books, seminars, advisors, anything that come to mind as having made a real difference, whether it's in your business life or in your personal life, that you're like, you know what, I would recommend. I've tried a lot of things.

Here are a few things I would definitely recommend that people check out. Yeah, I mean uh a a big s a big book at Soul Cycle for us was always Start with Why. From Simon Cynic, and I know that that's made it to a lot of your lists, and a lot of people are Simon Cynic fans, but but I will say, and You know, this is what I think is so interesting, you know, as somebody who is fascinated with brand. and you know, the articulation of brand and and all things brand. I I think that people are often confused and think of brand as the way something looks or the color of a logo. But you know, brands are really how people feel.

The really, you know, I think it was maybe Jeff Bezos who said it's what people say about you when you're not in the room, or you know, that kind of a thing. And I I do think that Um Іно старт в сон because People understanding, you know. why you do something, not what you are doing, is really what what makes or breaks a brand.

And I think everything about that book is fantastic. I think that you know for us. really we we spent so much time, you know, I remember the day that we just really officially stopped doing our day jobs. I looked at Elizabeth and said, like are we ever going to go get to go back to work or do we have to spend our whole life making these people happy? And that was the truth. But there was a day where, you know, it all turned and you began to realize that if the culture wasn't going to be good, that the product it wasn't gonna be good. And I think that's like a real, you know, core value from Simon Sinek, who really says that your happiest customer is only as happy as your happiest employee. And so for us, like really making sure that our employees were taken care of and and taken care of meaning, you know, not just financially, but really felt like they mattered, like the things that they were doing were moving the needle for the company, that we personally understood, you know, things that they were going through, achievements that they that they were, you know.

making happen. Um, I think that really taking care of employees in a way that they feel heard is very important. What were little things or big things that you did Two Foster those things. So

I mean interestingly enough, one of one of the main things that we recognized in the beginning when we started Soul Cycle was that the fitness industry in general was really broken. Um instructors didn't have full time jobs anywhere. So if you were a fitness professional, you would teach two classes at one gym and three classes at another gym and personal train somebody in their home. So you'd spend your entire life sort of you know, commuting and being exhausted just to try to cobble together a living. And then on top of it for doing one of the most physical jobs in the world, you had no health insurance, you had no paid vacation. Um and you know, you certainly had no place to call home or really feel like you had somebody or s to support you or that cared about you. And one thing that was very early on a goal for us was to create these careers for fitness instructors, which is something that we really did and Um

You know, we You know, we paid more. We gave people full health benefits. We paid for those vacations and You know, most importantly We really gave them a home. You know, we built a platform, you know, SoulCycle was really a platform that we built.

To alo You know, I we really thought of you know our fitness instructors as artists. For allow artists to really find their voice on a platform and to sort of give them the room to be creative and to grow into being their best selves. And I think by giving people that kind of a platform and room and then really taking care of them and kind of the tactical aspects of their lives. It allowed people to become a different kind of employee. I mean, what we found was that we didn't have employees. What we had was brand ambassadors. You know, we had people walking around so proud that they worked at SoulCycle telling everybody how fantastic it was. Um, you know, it became way more like a family than it did a job. Uh so I'm gonna ask some questions about good strategic decisions and then we're definitely gonna get to

You see how I've avoided the failures right. No, we're gonna get to the the wastes of time and money because there are But uh, one story that I read was related to Opening the

Bridgehampton location. and how you'd sort of resisted the urge to pay yourselves or pay yourselves much. And as I understand it, also had not taken outside investment. I would imagine, especially being in New York City, as soon as something seems to be going really well and spreading quite widely that you start getting calls, you start getting emails about outside investment. So Could you talk to

Why Uh Or or how you decided when to take outside investment, which could just be why you didn't take it up to this point. And then the the the thinking behind the Bridgehampton location, which for people who everybody in this room or a lot of people will I'm sure know where Bridgehampton is, but for those people out in the wider world, so you have Manhattan and then you have Long Island and you go way out and you have this place

Called the Hamptons. And uh depending on who you are, there's very little in the middle. Either you you love or you hate the Hamptons. I happen to grow up as a townie out there, so I have like this incredible inner conflict. Um and I and I bounce back And just to for people who do not know, so the Hamptons are kinda the where many of these successful people from Manhattan go to summer beautiful beaches where for some people they go to be seen

Why Wyber Champed and how do you guys think about it and why not outside investment? Let me just say that um You know Again to the point of ignorance is bliss, we opened in four months. You know, when I look back now And when I think about all the investing that um we've done and when I think about how the world is spinning with people raising money.

I I really think that um it was an incredible luxury to have no investors. I mean we were really allowed to make decisions that were just the best for the business. Um we always just used our gut instincts and you know there was no choice except doing what was right for our customers, what was right for employees, and really what was right for Soul Cycle. I mean we invented a brand that was like a human being, you know, and we would always make choices if it's you know, we have four daughters in between us, but you know, Soul Cycle was like our fifth daughter and we would always, you know, really make choices thinking about, you know, what is the right choice for this business. Um and Not having money in the beginning I also think really informed the way that we marketed. You know, we had no marketing dollars. I mean zero. Up until ten years into the business. We didn't spend, you know, any money on advertising. And I think what it really did was it really forced us

To be incredibly and incredibly scrappy and really be a part of the communities that we were trying to create. You know, we would be out there, you know. at the mouth of Central Park handing out flyers in the in the bike loop, I'd be pushing my stroller up and down Broadway, trying to get doormen to let me into mailroom buildings so that I could leave flyers. You know, if you could actually find our studio, which by the way was in the rear lobby of a building with no sign on the outside of it. We forgot to talk about that. We'll get to that in the epic failures. You know, we would we were so happy to see you that we would do anything. I mean, I would watch your dog, I'd feed your parking meter, I'd let your kids sit there and you know You know, play g a video game, like it didn't matter. Like we needed you to like your experience because we had zero money for marketing. And at the time trying to convince somebody to um come to the back lobby of a office building actually that was a mortuary, um to to do that.

To convince you to pay twenty seven dollars to click into a bike to be in a dark room for forty five minutes. I mean if we could get you there, like you had to come back. There was nothing we weren't doing to get you to come back. Um, but all that being said, it really was interesting because, you know, when I think about the way that we thought about that first studio and I think about that napkin that we wrote our hundred riders on, you know, I think about starting a business and I think about this for a lot of young entrepreneurs and There is so much low hanging fruit in the beginning. I mean, we really thought about building that first studio rider by rider. And you know, people will say to me, Did you ever think SoulCycle was gonna be such a big deal? Did you ever think this was gonna happen? And what I always thought to myself was I just knew that I needed to get a hundred people there. And that was not gonna be a problem for me because if I had to go and walk up and down the streets of Manhattan and call all my friends and get people on those bikes, like a hundred people are coming today. And that was what I thought about it. And I think that that really forced us to have a different kind of discipline than if we had had crazy investment and marketing dollars and um

I know it just it just shaped who we were in the way that we understood our customer because we were in it in a different kind of way, and there was a lot of freedom to that. And the great news for us was that, you know, our business model was great. I mean, we kept throwing more and more bikes in that room and it was teeny little place. I mean twelve hundred square feet. We ended up we had forty something bikes in there, twenty seven dollars a bike going eight times a day. You know, we were able to sort of create our first, you know, four or five, six studios, you know, taking from Peter, giving to Paul, selling to Mary. You know, it was like it was pretty great. I mean we were really able to finance one with the other and because we were not taking money out of the business, because we really were that disciplined, we were taking everything that we made and we were putting it back into the business and we were growing organically. And again to the same point of not noticing the Starbucks was missing from my life and taking the taxis, we were having a great time. And it really didn't feel like we were suffering. So I'm gonna I'm gonna and there I may be kinda chasing

So we we can s no no we can scrap it if need be. I I wanna highlight something that's really important that's come up numerous times with founders of companies that have done extremely well. On a large scale. In most cases.

Especially if the business models actually work. I mean there are some companies that get very big with business models that still work. But in the case of something like Soul Cycle. Yeah. It's very tempting to want to say that you're aiming for this billion dollar, two billion dollar, X billion dollar outcome. But uh you know, as as Seth Gooden said on the podcast before

It's very easy to hide when you have this grandiose, somewhat abstract Gigantic goal. And so he's like start small, because then you have nowhere to hide. If it's like a hundred people, it's a very clear, measurable outcome. and with no marketing dollars, this is also a common thread that I see with a lot of these companies that are uh at least those I've been exposed to that are that are kind of consumer facing.

is if you don't have much in terms of marketing dollars or you constrain it deliberately. You have to make sure your product is great. Like you really have to ensure that your product or service is really, really good and then your customers become your marketing. Well that's that's that was always the philosophy, right? I mean, we always knew, and again, this was part of it kind of all work together, right? Because we created a paper class model, it had to be great every time, or else nobody had to come back. And what we used to say was like it can't just be good.

Like this cannot be a utility. Like this needs to be so good that people are talking about it when they're out with their friends on Saturday night for dinner and they are wanting, you know, you want the credit for finding the coolest, greatest thing that's gonna make your friend feel the best, and you're gonna bring that person. And so the saying in the halls of Soul Cycle would be like we do not create users, we create evangelists. You know, and our evangelists were spreading the gospel for us, and that's really was our marketing. But I will answer your question about Bridge Hampton. Um we were uh we were doing very well. And um we had become this little upper west side destination and the studio was bustling and we were selling our classes really well.

We realized pretty soon everybody was gonna leave for the summer because that's what happens in New York, right? There's a mass exetus to different beaches and whether you know people are going to the Hamptons or the Jersey Shore or wherever they're going, there's nobody, you know, here on the weekends in the summer. And so I called Hamptons magazine to see what it would be to take, you know, an ad. I thought, oh we'll just take an ad in the fourth of July, you know, publication. And they gave me like a staggering quote. And I thought well we certainly don't have that much money. And the truth is, you know, what we did was experiential. You know, I could sit here and tell you how awesome it is to be on a bike and what it feels like and the music and the sweat and the instructors and the people and then you're sort of like you still can't really feel it because you know there's no music playing and we're not in the dark. And what I found was the only real way to get people to come and to really experience it was to to come and get them to take a class. And so We comp a lot of classes, we'd tell people if they didn't like it, they should pay. If they didn't like it, I'd give them their money back. But I realized that doing something experiential would be better than taking an ad.

And we got a phone call one day. And somebody said there's this great old potato barn and there used to be um some pole dancing class in there and the pole dancing class was apparently going out of business and now the space would be vacant if we wanted to create a cycling studio. And so we figured, you know, we could either spend seventy five thousand dollars running a quarter page ad in Hamptons magazine, or we could just run the studio and plan on making no money and just think of it as a marketing experiment. I mean that's all we thought it was gonna be was marketing dollars. And so we did. Um and we You know, we we went and we We painted the barn and we we rolled our bikes in there and we put a big yellow wheel on the wall and we flung open our doors and the barn became like a sensation. It really became, you know, I I

You know, we we're n we live in a little bit of a soul cycle bubble, but it really is like I mean, it's really the epicenter of you know Hampton's social life. You know, people will tell you that, you know, if they can go and, you know take a class at the barn at Soul Cycle in the morning and then sort of you know hob you know hobnob in between classes they barely need to go out at night anymore because that barn sees hundreds and hundreds of people between the hours of seven and twelve on a Saturday morning. Um and it really it it what it did for us was it took our little Upper West Side business from being a local kind of great neighborhood business, hundred people a day, to all of a sudden becoming this sort of buzzworthy New York City on page six in the New York Times. you know, destination and we came back from that summer and what happened on Mondays at noon, which is when our um reservation system opens. So if you want to reserve a bike at Soul Cycle, you go on Monday at noon if you have a specific thing that you'd like to reserve and you can sign up for your classes for the full week. And what happened for us when we came back that

That um fall was that we started to crash servers at noon on Monday. The the demand load became crazy. And all of a sudden we noticed like a l a line of town cars up and down the street would always be parked outside for Soul Cycle classes. There was no Uber yet at the time. And what it was is that people were coming from all over now. You know, tr waiting out and their drivers or whoever whatever rides they were taking up there would be waiting outside. And it became it you know, that's when we knew like we needed to grow. I'm no scientist, but I think we should get another studio. Except.

The market doesn't want us to grow. You know, it's two thousand and seven. And everybody wants a Chase Bank or a Dwayne Reed in their space. You know, two women with a business that is throwing off a bunch of cash still does not look that attractive. Okay. So how do you how do you solve that problem? Well then two thousand and eight happens. Sudden Wake Up Suddenly Cash is King. No. Um no you know, it still was not easy, but two thousand and eight happened and um it definitely became

You know, easier for us to think about getting space. Um After we um you know uh we started to well we uh okay, so now let's talk about um you know when we actually did take money because there d did come a point after about you know four years where we we took money. We had eight studios. And It's interesting. Our decision to take money was not so much about the money itself, but again, we really loved what we were doing. We could really see how SoulCycle was changing neighborhoods and it was changing communities and it was changing the way that people felt about themselves and about

Other people. And We wanted a win. You know, we had first mover advantage and we were starting to see copycats come into the landscape and we were introduced to Equinox to um Harvey Spivak, who's the CEO of Equinox, and we started to get to know him. And you know, the money and the cash infusion seemed nice, although you know, we had a pretty good business. I mean the businesses were making money and and we could have expanded in a slower way.

But we thought to ourselves that you know, we would take a strategic partner rather than just taking money. And they would be able to help us, you know, grow thirty studio fift ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty studios at a time rather than let's say five or six or seven a year. What were some of the decisions or initiatives or anything where you look back and you're like

Wow. That was a bad use of time or money. So any anything come to mind? Mm-hmm. Or just or just yeah, we should have thought about that differently. Well, there are definitely a few. I mean we definitely made a lot of mistakes along the way. Neither of us had ever been entrepreneurs before, and um there were small mistakes and there were definitely bigger mistakes. Uh

You know, Elizabeth always likes to say, you know, every time we would make a mistake, it would be fifty thousand dollars we didn't have, and she would say, Well, look at it this way, you know, neither of us went to business school. It's like part of our tuition for our MBAs. Um and that that that was always true, but you know, we started out in our first studio and what did we know? We did never built anything before and we We built a studio and some guy told us that he was really good at soundproofing things and he'd done some porn studios in Midtown and so we thought, Great, like this guy's done porn studios, go to it. Um and he stuffed some insulation into the ceilings and closed them off and then you know cut to opening day, we turned on the stereo to find like a line of irate neighbors outside of our door. Um and we certainly did not have money to re-soundproof the studio. And so that was, you know, that was really interesting. Um hold on hold on. I'm sure it was interesting. Fade to black. Uh so what would you do? Well

Um Now we're getting into it. I find that if you can befriend, you know, local neighborhood law enforcement, sometimes they will sound proof they will come and do the sound checks for your studio later in the evening. When there may or may not be actual classes going on. And then you might actually be able to make the sound a little bit lower than you do during regular classes sometimes.

Yeah, it makes it worked for us for a while. Um until we had money to re soundproof the studio. Yeah, well you have to yeah, you gotta sometimes have to build the bridges you're crossing it. Yes, and we've we built some of those. Um another fantastic memory was our first customer appreciation day. Um, this one this is really like one of my favorite. I didn't talk about a study in human behavior. So we decided after about a year we really wanted to thank the people that had helped us build business. And so what we were going to do was an entire day of free classes on Saturday, starting you know, seven o'clock in the morning, all day long. We were so excited about it. I mean, for us, giving up a Saturday of revenue was huge. I mean, Saturday was our biggest day. We had four of those a month. I mean, we were still living by the s you know, skin of our teeth. We were still going, you know. So we um

We decided we were gonna let everybody just call the studio rather than use the reservation system and sign up for free. We were gonna do you know big bowls of fruit and free drinks and juice sponsorships and all this great stuff. Cut to we like open up the phone lines and of course a million people that don't ever come to SoulCycle sign up for the free classes. And now all of our regulars are irate. because they actually don't give a shit if they have to pay for class. They just wanna be on the bike they want to be on with the instructor at the time that they wanna be on. And now what we have is hundreds of pissed off customers Who cannot get into a Saturday class at SoulCycle and hundreds of people that may or may not actually show up, but just signed up for a free class because I put it in timeout. And that was our first customer appreciation day. So that was a great learning exercise. Um I would say the worst amount of money we ever spent was, you know

Scrappy entrepreneurs, no funding, uh Elizabeth worked on all of our technology with a web developer in Long Island. You know, they built everything, you know. as it came up. So you know, first we built it for one studio, and then we built it for ten studios, and then we wanted to have ecom and you know, until we built this thing that was basically like building a million extensions onto a foundation of a house that couldn't handle it. And so we needed to rebuild our website. And so we were psyched. I mean we we had a million dollars to spend and we were gonna hire the pros. And that's what we did. We went out and we hired a big fancy agency and we worked on, you know, articulating our vision and our brand, and we spent six months explaining to somebody else what we already knew, which was you know our brand and our experience and the user experience and things that were kind of already working on that website.

Um And then was gonna be the big reveal, our big fancy new website. And I don't know, I mean they they they gave us a new, you know, a new CTO that was checking all the hardware and software and all the things that we were launching, but somehow we flipped on the switch that day and Flipped off the other website and it was great because eight people could book the same bike in the same class at the same time. Um and that was a disaster. And then to make it even better, nobody could fix it. One week of signups went by, four weeks of signups went by, six weeks of signups went by. Talk about using up your goodwill. You know, the first few weeks people gave us the benefit of the doubt. We had great customer service teams, people showed up, they gave people hugs, they gave people free classes, four thugs they're like, yeah for the hugs. Yeah. It was like by by week number four.

Or people were just like the we were just they just thought we were totally inept. Wow. Um and that's actually how our app was born to divert people from our fancy new website that never actually got working. I mean it works now, but it took us quite a while. I mean we were able to build an app better than we were able to fix that site. It was stressful. So Yeah. I don't know if if this is still a thing and maybe it was never a thing and it's just something somebody wrote on the internet. Sixteen seconds to calm. Huh.

That's how long I can meditate. Yeah, okay. Could you can you talk about that and any other tools that might help when you're going through An experience like that. So um I'm not really good at sitting still. That's not my specialty.

Uh, I've definitely tried meditation in many different forms with many very talented people and and many trusted friends have referred me to many places that I I'm sure are the right places to be meditating and I have never found it yet in my being to meditate. I think that's Why Soul Cycle s continues to be such a huge part of my life just because There is something in that room for me that is really meditative and to the point of coping skills, it's still something that's in my, you know, daily practice. almost, you know, at least a couple of times a week. Um

But for me, I have a friend who started a meditation studio in Los Angeles, and um Sent me a you know a million ways to get onto her app and her stuff. And there is one meditation that I have found that is called 16 Seconds to Come. And it's sixteen seconds, and you basically take one breath in and one breath out, but this guy tells you why you're interrupting patterns while you do that, because you're focusing on your breath, and he claims that in your in those sixteen seconds, you have interrupted your thoughts enough that you have broken the cycle of anxiety. And I choose to believe it. Besides besides the sixteen seconds. And aside from uh Soul Cycle, are there other tools

Uh. habits, routines, anything at all that you found to help you to operate at a high level when There's the potential to be overwhelmed by stress. I mean you you like you said, you don't you don't strike me as the type to sit still for very long. Seem to do

a lot and m and get a lot done. Uh and therein lies the risk of I think Overwhelm. So w what are other things you do to avoid buckling under Overwhelming. Um, I I will honestly say that the the number one thing that keeps me from buckling under is that I have a really awesome marriage. Um, I know that that sounds

funny or or maybe not, but I have chosen a partner who actually Um is really amazing at communicating with me during times of anxiety and actually has sort of created an atmosphere in our home that is not super tolerant of my anxiety. Um in the best way possible. Um it looks like

It looks like you know when I walk through the threshold of my house, you know, um I have a partner that If I'm stressed out. Sort of demands me to communicate about it and sort of get rid of it. And um, you know we have a lot of respect for each other and he usually finds a way to to figure out what it is that can can bring me down from that. And I I will say that being in a relationship like that with somebody who is

not an anxious person who is able to kind of de escalate your own anxiety is is kind of fantastic. Could you give an example, you don't have to, but if if you can of Language is so important here, right? Like the devil's really in the detail, so what might he say or ask When he's like, Uh oh, code red, I see what's coming. And wants to

Like just this morning. We were preparing for this interview. And I said to him like Are you gonna help me with the questions for Tim Ferris? And he said to me, You know?

I didn't want to say this to you yesterday. But you said that to me the same way yesterday. And you were asking it to me in a way that obviously you're very anxious. And you know, of course I want to help you. But would you like to ask that in a different way?

And I thought to myself, you know, I know he wants to help me because he is like the biggest supporter of my whole entire life. And I'm sure that he and I know that he spent a lot of time thinking about this because he sent me emails you know that I asked him to think about this. Then I thought for a second about my own anxiety. And where I was going with it because I thought You know, oh I have something else to do at eleven, and is he gonna help me at ten thirty? And it was my own crazy person in there, thinking like you need to help me right now. That was like my own person. But he does not get worked up like that. And so he said to me, like, Do you want to ask me differently? Because you asked me the same way yesterday.

And I don't think and the thing was that was just an my own check. And Most of the times that I um You know. Um

communicating badly with him, with my children. It's because I'm in a state of anxiety or distress. And I think having somebody like that by your side that can check you like that. Again, in a way that's loving, not in a way that's, you know. like that, I think that really helps to to bring the situation down. And I and I will tell you one other amazing thing that we we do in our house that has really helped to

Um kind of refrain we um we live. So We started to celebrate Shabbat. About five years ago. I was out one day with um

A friend of mine who is like a super successful music executive. She's like definitely one of my main girl crushes. You know, she's like a total boss and a real power broker, and we were having a business lunch one day. And at the end of the lunch. She said to me, you know, I have to duck out a few minutes early, I have to go pick up a hala for Shabbatala for people who don't celebrate Shabbat is the braided bread that we eat on Shabbat, right? And um You know,

One thing that, you know, my business partner Elizabeth loves, she always says to me, it's always fun to find out something new that you don't know about somebody that you think you know really well. So I looked at my friend Julie and I said, Really? I said, You like celebrate Shabad on Friday night? And she said, Yeah, you know, I'm out a couple of nights of the week listening to music and I find that, you know, because I'm so busy, it's really It's a lot of integrity for our family. You know, we all have to be at the dinner table at six thirty on Friday night, and we put our phones away and we light candles. And we don't take out our phones till the next morning, and it's the one thing that we do in our house that really, you know, reframes our time together. And I thought, wow. She's clearly more important than I am and she makes this happen. So like I could definitely fit Shabbat in.

And we started to have Shabbat. And here's the interesting thing, you know, we're not religious people. I would say that we are we're spiritual just in the way that we believe that, you know, the way that you are in the world is the way that you feel in the world. And I think that we believe in something Bigger and that we're all connected in some way, but I I wouldn't say that we're religious. But we started to have Shabbat, and we have very few requirements of our children, but one requirement is that everybody is home for that evening. Our daughter, who was five months old when we started SoulCycle, she's now 13, and our role for her is she can have as many friends as she wants, but she has to be there. And we light our candles at six thirty. And there's something about the time that it takes those candles to burn. That for me who cannot meditate.

Um being with people that I love, and there's always plenty of people at our table. It's friends or family, and it's always fantastic. And there is just something about The time that it takes those candles to burn and not having phones and having a different kind of conversation with each other and just It's almost like I've given myself permission for the evening to shut down.

Um and whatever that is inside of me that has Whenever the the minute we light the candle it says like it's cool till tomorrow. Like the world's gonna wait for you. There's something about that ritual for me that's really one of the times that I look forward to most in the week. What uh

What rules do you have? During uh Shabbat and and does it Is it primarily f and what's the duration? Is it is it primarily from that dinner to the following morning and you guys all put phones away? Yeah, is that the p is that the most important rule? Are there other rules that you guys follow?

No, we say you know, we say We we like candles and we do say two prayers in Hebrew. It's it's what we do. Um my husband has recently started playing the guitar and he's he's mastering some guitar songs and so we usually if we try to have some music, he's getting pretty good. Um our kids are usually super embarrassed if they have friends over there. Their dad's playing the guitar and their mom singing and clapping. So it's a really big hit. I try to buy a lot of really good desserts, you know, everything from Levaine Bakery to Bake by Melissa on down to to lure my kids to stick around the table for a certain amount of time. Um, Spencer and I try to keep our phones in the drawer until the following morning. My daughter, you know

would obviously die without getting back on Snapchat by about nine o'clock, so we allow her to do that. Um and there are no rules really. And the and the crazy thing is, you know It's just again it's It's always intimate. It always feels like a safe space. It always feels like people can share like what really happened to them that week, you know, how they're really feeling about themselves, their triumphs, their tragedies. It just feels like there's like no bullshit at the table. You know, people are really for for all the times during the week that you had to go out and pretend it was great or that you were killing it at work. or that I loved you at school today or whatever it is. It just feels like it's a really kind of, you know

We all go well, you know, we go in pajamas or sweatpants, you know, no matter who's coming over, and it's just a super relaxed kind of just bring your best self or bring your real self. I love it. What a beautiful ritual. Uh Where should I go from here? Well, you mentioned the prepping for the interview and the anxiety. Were there any questions that you hoped I would ask you? Like, you know what, I have a really good answer to that. I have a really good answer to this type of question. I hope he asked me this. Or conversely, was there anything where like I hope to God he really doesn't ask me?

Um This is a bit of a tricker, is it? Well, I have to say, you know, I did do some research while I was uh, you know getting ready for the interview and I was really, you know, I listened to a lot of very impressive people on your podcast, and I was really thinking to myself, like I haven't written a book, I don't really have a method for anything. Um so I was really hoping that you wouldn't ask me for some sort of dissertation on something. Um I was thinking a lot, uh a couple of things that I was thinking about were just, you know

I was thinking about Soul Cycle a little bit and I was thinking kind of about what made the experience special. And I was thinking about if we would talk about that a little bit, just sort of about, you know, the construction of what that experience is like in the room. And and I think that's kind of an interesting one. I you know, I think that Um, we've really crafted the experience in that room to be a lot of the things that I think people really need today. Um and what we've done is we've really taken uh, you know, we've created an eight week training program for our instructors and what we teach in those three things is we teach them, you know, we teach them how to be spiritual and emotional leaders. We teach them how to

Um, be physical fitness instructors so they can give people what they need for their bodies. And we also teach them how to be DJs and how to create music like artists. And what I think is really interesting about taking those three different tracks of you know psychology you know physical experience and also creativity and putting them together Is You really provide something for people in a room that allows them to access many different parts of themselves that I think people don't often get to access. And I do think that

There is something about that. Um and about creating sort of that moment. You know, we we we've created the class sort of in five stages. I mean, there's almost five stages that we break it down into, which is, you know, we we warm people up. Um, you know, we Pop the party.

We break'em down. We give them a soulful moment and we send them home like heroes. You know, and there's something about that emotional arc and that physical arc with music matching it all. That I think really provides people with a lot of what they need to get today in the world. And I think it's also a really interesting journey for people to go through together because although people aren't speaking and aren't communicating, they are all experiencing a journey together. And so there is it's it's a really interesting way in a world where people have almost forgotten. how to communicate with each other because of phones and digital isolation to allow people to participate in something where they really do feel closer and connected to each other at the end.

I'd love to Ask a bit more about the spiritual emotional leaders part. What is the what does the curriculum look like for that? You know, there are quite a few there's there's there's several parts of it, and I think the main part of it is Allowing people to Have a place to be vulnerable.

to come and express their own vulnerabilities as well as to to talk about things that are that they're thinking about their own vulnerabilities and then to empower people to really deliver messages to people that allow them to, you know, as they are wearing down physically, as the music is is playing, as they are this close to somebody else who's moving with them. We are teaching them to deliver messages that allow people to believe that they're enough that they can be more than they thought that they can be, that they could achieve more than they thought that they could achieve.

that you know people are rooting for them, that are hoping for them. And I think that there is something about the empower that people get in that room when they are, you know, inhabiting their physical bodies in a way that feels strong. And teaching those, you know, instructors to deliver messages of positivity, you know, to really they read they read a lot of, you know, different What are some of them? Um about what people are reading in there. You know we w the curriculum's actually wide and that's the other thing also because we've created it to look more like a framework. And we all we also like to use the expression sort of freedom within framework. So we are allowing people to

You know, to Although they are creating within that framework to really, you know, find their own voice, to find their own music. And that's also why I think that our riders gravitate to different instructors, because somebody that's moving me might not be the same person that moves you. And yet we've kind of created this shell of an experience. It's almost like a mad lib, right? Where they learn. Sort of this. this outline, this t technique, and then they can take it and fill in their own content.

And Uh aside from the uh uh the Simon Sinek book that that you mentioned, which I do recommend people check out, it does come uh pop up a lot on the podcast. Are there any other books that either you've recommended to managers or employees or that you've just recommended or gifted to other people. Well, I definitely give people a lot of people that Helen and Harville book that I was talking about, Getting the Love You Want.

Um something else that we did a lot of reading at Soul Cycle is Setting the Table by Danny Meyer. just for um, you know, we we also ran an incredibly interesting hospitality school for our for our people that worked in the front of house and not in those rooms. Um you know, we we're all big fans of the Tony Shay book delivering happiness. Um And I think those were like some of our favorites.

Yeah, Danny Meyer's amazing. Uh yeah. Very very fascinating guy. Uh How we're doing on time? I do not have a countdown oh yes I do. I've done

What's that? Seven thirty five. Okay, great. Uh let's see.

I would j love to hear what you are currently most excited about. And why? Because much like my question at the very beginning about what you saw in that bartender and how you kinda pick Where are you gonna allocate your time? Mm-hmm. Right. You you've made some very deliberate choices. And when you make a choice, when you make a decision, right, you are cutting yourself off, just like incision. You're cutting yourself off from other possibilities like an opportunity cost. So what are you

most excited about now professionally, personally. Or anything in between. Um it's funny to talk about opportunity cost, because for the longest time I really thought you could just do everything. And I'm I'm starting to I'm starting to understand that there are only a certain amount of hours in the day. Um but I will say that, you know Well, sitting here in the middle of Made by We is really interesting because I think that it's definitely a good example of something that I'm thinking a lot about these days, which is

Um, you know, how how are people connecting in a world where people spend most of their time on their phones or connecting digitally? I think that's something that's really interesting to think about is You know, where are the places and what are the experiences that we're delivering to people to allow them to connect? Now we're reading about loneliness as an epidemic. You know, I'm personally terrified watching my thirteen year old and the way she interacts with her friends and their phones, you know, they're all in the same room and yet they're all on their phones communicating.

Амрили обсedда. People are lonely and people are unhappy. And how are we giving people skills? to be happier and how are we giving them places to find those connections. And so, you know, a place like this, when I think about it, it's really a new version of a community center. You know, a place where we can go and especially in an economy where so many of us are now have the luxury of, you know Having our own company, working by ourselves in our apartment. Now that all sounds great until the day that you wake up and think I could really use somebody else around me to help me get inspired.

And so really thinking about, you know, how people connect. and and what kind of tools we need to give them so that they can connect and connect in meaningful ways. This is a beautiful space. I mean I don't know how people in the audience feel, but uh it's it's my first time here and I would love I could have used a place like this many years ago. And uh hopefully there'll be many, many more. Uh come any time. Yeah, it's absolutely absolutely stunning. Uh And Let's wrap up with just a few final questions. Uh

And this one. Sometimes a good question, sometimes a terrible question. We'll find out. And that is if you could put A message, a question, a quote, anything at all. Metaphorically speaking on a billboard to get some a message out to millions or billions of people. Non commercial.

For the time being. Do you have any thoughts on what you might put on that? For me this is a very easy one. Um you know, I'm a terrible claustrophobic. I did not know that. Yes. I am a terrible claustrophobic and ready for this. I live in New York City. I do not take elevators.

Like do not never don't take elevators, have gone to weddings, black tie weddings at the Rainbow Room, seventy one flights. I walk. Yeah. Wow. Presumably you're not in like a a you know running shoes when you go to such a function. I have a whole situation. I have my heels in a bag and I wear my sneakers up in full hair makeup outfit. I make it to the top, I blot, I put my heels on and I walk out like nothing happens. Yeah. But yes, I so elevators are not my thing. And so if I was gonna put a billboard up, I think that it would say, um there is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs.

Ha ha. I love it. Uh I dig it. And uh do you have any Final Comments, asks, recommendations. Anything all that you'd like to say before we wrap up?

I don't think so. I'm I'm so happy I got a chance to talk to you and thank you so much for coming. I know that uh people were so excited to have you in the space, so it's awesome to have you here. Oh it's great to be here and it's nice to see you again. I for people who don't know, we've spent time uh together before and I've been looking forward to this. And as soon as we had a chance, the very first time to spend you know, ten or fifteen minutes together, I was like, I need to get her on the podcast at some point in my head. So here we are. And it's been really fun. I've taken so many notes. Everybody in the crow has watched me taking all these notes for things that I'm gonna follow up on and and dig into Where are the best places for people to find you, learn more about what you're up to? We work, anything that you'd like to mention in terms of resources, and of course I'll put these in the show notes uh online as well.

Definitely. Um so you can always find out what's going on in this space. Um on our Instagram. Is that right, Joel? Where are you? What's the best way to find out about stuff in this space? Yes. Made dot by dot we. It's very hard to get domain names. There we go. Um and um

A good way to find out what's going on with me is either at my Instagram. Which is at Julie Rice underscore. Um or Elizabeth and I have a great Instagram which is at Soul Founders. Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. This has really been fun.

Thank you everybody for coming. And until next time. See you round. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with

my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, Hope you enjoy it.

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