Final: SoulCycle
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[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the female founder world podcast is Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the creator of the female founder world universe. Before we get into this episode with the founder of SoulCycle, Julie Rice, I want to let you know about female founder world summit on Saturday, 9th of December in New York, tickets are on sale now.
And they're actually moving very, very quickly. We do have a handful left, but honestly, if this is on your vision board for 2023, make sure that you grab your spot now because it is moving quick. Female Founder World Summit is the end of year party for all the entrepreneurial girls who don't usually get that end of year office party because we're building businesses, we're self employed and maybe we don't even have an office.
We have speakers and live mentorship sessions with the founders of SoulCycle, like Julie, who you're hearing from today on the show. You're also going to hear from the founder of Poppy, which is one of the fastest growing beverage companies in the U S and literally started from the founder's kitchen.[00:01:00]
Little words project. Which was bootstrapped to 20 million in annual revenue, half days, and more incredible female founders. We're going to have a wine bar by Nomadica, brand activations, a little mini relaxation station from within, incredible gift bags that are worth more than what your ticket costs. So even if you just turn up.
And grab your gift bag. You've already made your money back, and of course, a room filled with your future business besties. There will be vibes, a dj, and just a really good time. And honestly, if you've been listening to the podcast, if you're part of our group chat or you've come to any of the workshops, I know that you have leveled up in some way this year, and I think that that really deserves celebrating.
Head to fe Found world.com to get your ticket. Our events always sell out, so make sure you get onto this one today. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy. Julie Rice, welcome to Female Founder World. It is so good to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. I am kind of pinching myself.
I feel like you're one of those founders that [00:02:00] everyone knows what you've built and everyone knows It's kind of who you are. You have created something that is so much bigger than just you. And I'm excited to get into it and to share all of these lessons that you've had over many years of building incredible companies for people who don't know you.
What have you built? I'm Julie Rice. I'm the co founder of SoulCycle. And after that, I did a brief stint at WeWork. I was a partner there for a few years. Didn't know that. I was. And now I have a new startup called Peoplehood. I'm going to get into the Peoplehood story in a second, but the first thing I just have to ask is Why start another company after you have, you know, already built something that has been so successful?
What made you think, okay, I'm going to get on this train again and do this all over again? I'm tired thinking about it. Look, Elizabeth and I build things that we want to see in the world. We are really the [00:03:00] users of the products that we build. I'm not somebody who, you know, looks at the landscape of what's trending and consumerism and thinks, Oh.
That's something that's trending. I should build that because, you know, there's an opportunity to make money, Elizabeth and I really build things that we need, that we want to use, that we feel like we can be part of a community of. And so I, I really do build these things for me and, you know, success for me has always been a by product of building things that I wanted to go to.
And so. I really saw something that didn't exist in the world and I felt like I'd give it another try. And here we are. Like we said, I want to talk about peoplehood in a minute because I think what you're doing is very needed and very important, but we need to, to get to people who need to understand the SoulCycle journey.
And oh my God, what a story. What a story you guys have. I want to know how you met your co founder Elizabeth and how things got off the ground. Yeah, absolutely. So before SoulCycle, I had an [00:04:00] entirely different life. I lived in Los Angeles. I was a talent agent. I have loved actors since I'm the entertainment business theater.
I was a real theater kid. I have just loved all and all of everything about production. And so after college, I moved to LA. I was I was fairly successful in the movie business. At about age 30, I decided I wanted to move home. And I came back to New York. And one thing that I noticed was that there was no exercise like what I had experienced in Los Angeles, which was You know, exercise was social.
I would go hiking with my friends. I would go biking by the beach. It was something that you did to make yourself feel better. It was a way to release stress. It was really just a part of a lifestyle that had not yet made its way to New York City. And I was taking a class at a gym in New York and I was taking a class.
Class with a teacher and I kept saying to her, this could be different. This could be better. It could be social. It could be fun. There could be a [00:05:00] brand around it. And one day she said to me, you know, there's a woman that takes a class of mine at another gym, you should meet her. She said she wants to invest in starting a fitness business.
And it was crazy. Elizabeth and I met for lunch. We met at the Soho house. It was January. And. We have this amazing lunch, and the truth is, I'm sorry that Elizabeth isn't here, but if you met her, we're really very different. But we sat down and we started talking and we, we just had a very common vision. We were very passionate about the same thing.
She had just moved from Colorado to the city at a very similar timeline as I had. Also looking for hiking and the sociability of exercise and I left lunch that day and as I got into my cab, my cell phone rang and she said, okay, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to research real estate and you're going to look for towels and we're going to meet on Thursday.
And sure enough, on Thursday she called me and she had found an old Craigslist. Does Craigslist even still exist? I don't [00:06:00] even know. I think so. It certainly is not a place that I would ever look for anything anymore. But she had found this old dance studio on Craigslist. It was in the rear lobby of a building.
It was 1300 square feet. I met her there. It looked fine to us. We went across the street to a Starbucks. We wrote our business model on the back of a napkin. And we thought if we saw a hundred people a day at 27 a bike, we would be able to keep the lights on. We'd be able to pay for the bikes, which you rent.
And And we also both had young babies at the time, and we needed to pay for some childcare if we were going to go try to start a new business. And that's what we did. What was the vision in the early days? Did you know that SoulCycle was going to become SoulCycle or were you creating? A studio. Oh, we were creating a studio.
I just remember thinking like it was my job to make sure that at least 75 people got on the bikes a day and I just couldn't go home until that happened. And if I had to walk up and down Broadway or go hand out flyers to doormen, that is what I did. And one of the things that I, I, [00:07:00] in retrospect, I really look at, and I think it's actually hard as a second time founder is I, I really think that when you're building a business.
Thinking about how you make one customer an evangelist is the way you do it. It's just, it is that feeling of not just product market fit, but it's that feeling of really making somebody feel like not only is the product great, but that they matter to the business. And in retrospect, they really did. We were in the rear lobby of a building.
We had no sign. Nobody could find us. There was no boutique fitness. There was no category. When people used to call the front desk and I would tell them that they had to pay 27 for a spin class, they would say to me, but that's included in my gym membership. And so we had to love people so much that they wanted to come back.
And I really try to keep that in mind the second time around, just really thinking about just focusing on making one customer, not just happy, but so happy that they have to tell a friend. [00:08:00] Uh, I had no aspirations to create, you know, a hundred spin studios. It was really about how do I make this one place the best place.
Okay. So how do you do that? I am interested in how you get those first people in the door. You did it with SoulCycle and now you're doing it again with this new business Peoplehood. How do you get those first people through the door? Obviously you have a bit more of an advantage now in that you have more resources, you have a name, you know, people want to hear from you and what you're building.
But I think that there's a lot of lessons there for folks who are not just building bricks and mortar businesses, but trying to get their product in front of people. Like what, what's working, what works then and what works now. Look, I have always been a believer in community building and building relationships.
I think that we can all see that we can spend a lot of money on customer acquisition, but that doesn't always translate to retention. And you know, we can just continue to churn and churn and churn. Yep. But realistically, if we all doubled [00:09:00] down and really invested in, you know, turning our customers into communities, I do believe that is the way that you get people to stay and you create a lifetime value of a customer because a customer feels valued.
And that's really what we did in the beginning. In the beginning, we Just became part of the community, you know, we were at every street fair handing out flyers. We were at the local public school offering them, you know, free classes for all the moms, seeing if the PA wanted to organize a fundraiser and just use our space.
We allowed everyone that walked through the door to use the space to, for whatever, you know, Charities or philanthropies were important to them. And then a lot of it also really came down to training our employees to be hospitalitarians, right? Training, And building community has always been such an important part of the ethos of everything that Elizabeth and I build and really investing in [00:10:00] teaching people how to treat each other like a community and how to treat customers like a community.
I'm interested in what that means. turning point was for you at SoulCycle when you knew that this was going to be something that was a lot bigger than just this, you know, single studio and that you kind of knew that you were onto something. Was it, you know, a second location? Was it a piece of feedback?
Like, how do you know that you're at this inflection point that things are going to snowball? You know, I can actually tell you, I can, I can think of each milestone along the way and I can tell you a couple of them because they're so memorable and, you know, I remember sitting in the rear lobby with nobody coming in, with no sign.
In fact, we actually bought a rickshaw. on eBay, and we changed, we painted it yellow and silver, and we put a sign on the back of it that said SoulCycle with an arrow this way. And every day we would get a ticket from the community board for 65. So eventually I learned the traffic patterns because we didn't have [00:11:00] 65 to spend.
And so I would put it out there like on Saturday mornings because a lot of people would see it. But I will say, I will never forget the day that our first class sold out. I remember closing the door to the studio and there were 35 people on bikes and I thought, wow. Yeah. Like the room is full. And I closed the door and 35 people were on the bikes and it was amazing.
And I will say, you know, in the category of charmed life, we started to cashflow after six months. We became. You know, profitable. We started the business for 250, 000. We built it out of Ikea and we rented bikes and so it was really, it was a different time. But then, you know, you start to sell out classes and actually what wound up happening was, you know, the supply, you know, the supply became less than the demand.
All of a sudden we started to sell out classes and sell out classes. And we could not get another space. It was 2007, 2006, 2007. And at the time, [00:12:00] remember, New York City wanted to rent retail space to Banana Republic, to Duane Reade, to Chase Bank. You know, two women with a business that was making a lot of cash was not exactly the most desirable thing.
Anyway, we decided that we were gonna open a summer location in the Hamptons. And I called Hampton's Magazine to see how much it would take to put an ad in the 4th of July issue and they told me the price and I said to Elizabeth, listen, people don't understand this business one dimensionally, like an ad isn't even going to do anything.
We should go out to the beach, see if we can find a space, and if we can run a summer studio just for break even, just for marketing, we should do it. And we did and we went and we opened the barn which has become like somewhat legendary out in, in Bridgehampton. And another milestone was we came back from that summer and all of a sudden there were town cars lined up and down the block outside the studio in the [00:13:00] morning.
And we knew we had gone from being like a great full neighborhood business to becoming like a citywide thing. People were coming from all over. It was like, it was a crazy thing. And then we started crashing servers on Monday for signup. You know, we had one developer who built us this little, you know, sign up website, which by the way, at the time, nobody had digital signups.
You used to go to your gym an hour before spin class, sign up on paper, wait the hour. So for us, like our online reservation system was revolutionary. Anyway, we started to crash servers on Monday. That was another milestone. The site could not take the traffic. And then the last milestone that I will tell you about was we had opened, you know, a bunch of studios in New York city, a couple in the suburbs around New York, but we had still only open studios that Elizabeth and I could physically touch.
You know, I would go and merchandise every studio. Elizabeth would go and, you know, stand behind the front desk. And I [00:14:00] remember, People always saying to me, you know, that's great as long as you can be there. But how are you going to scale human experience? Oh my gosh, question of my life right now. Right. How are you going to scale, you know, what people feel?
And I will never forget, we opened our West Hollywood location. And Elizabeth and I went and we cut the ribbon. And then a year later we went back. And we rode in the class and afterwards we went into the lobby. And just like in all of the New York studios, people started to pull me aside and say, you know, I came because I wanted to lose a couple of pounds, but you should see what this has done for my marriage.
Or, I came because my doctor said I needed better cardiovascular health, but this gave me the confidence to leave my job. And it was the exact same things that people were saying in the lobbies in New York City, in Connecticut, in Scarsdale. All the places that I would go once a week and visit, and I hadn't really touched LA.
I mean, we'd done a lot of training, of course, we'd sent out a home team to open it up, but it was all, I [00:15:00] knew then that if we invested in people, both in our community, our instructors and our front desk employees, that we were going to be able to scale human experience. That's incredible. I want to know how you do that.
You say invest in, invest in people. What does that look like to equip someone to go and do the thing that you do? How do you, how do you outsource and externalize that? I think a lot of people, you get to an inflection point in any business where you're like, I need to hand over this thing, otherwise it can't grow.
How do you do that? Yeah. So it's interesting because, you know, I would say that if I looked at the landscape of direct to consumer businesses out there, I have to say that I think people really underestimate the time and money. That actually training human beings takes, you know, people would come to soul cycle and say, this is so amazing.
Everyone here is so great. I mean, that did not just happen. You know, every one of those people that was so great was really invested in in a very real way. [00:16:00] I would say the biggest cost that we had at soul cycle was the money that we spent investing in people and it was well worth it because people were our product.
But yeah. Ultimately, you know, a lot of the DNA of businesses I always think comes from the founders, right? You know, founders make instinctual choices. I think businesses are really reflections of the values and principles of their founders. Elizabeth and I, two female leaders in a time when by the way, there were not that many female entrepreneurs or CEOs.
We have four daughters between us and our litmus test for the business. We used to say when we would make choices, is this a place we would want our daughters to work? And that's how we made every decision. Is this, is this the way I would treat a friend? Is this the way I would want my daughter to be treated?
And so, first I think you take that DNA. But then the question is, how do you scale the DNA of what decision I might make at the front desk? So we were lucky enough very early on to [00:17:00] find a Chief Culture Officer. She was actually a customer. She came to me one day after class and said, I'd like to work here.
We said, I, we have no money. The only people that work here are me and Elizabeth. She said, maybe we can trade some classes. Anyway, I always say, I never remember the day that Amy got her first paycheck, but we've been working together ever since. And Amy would run around with a notebook and she would codify these decisions.
And ultimately, after a decade, we had a hundred different, you know, units of education that we taught at SoulCycle University, which was the entire basement of our HQ. We had fake front desks and everybody would learn everything from history of the brand. How to be a culture of yes, every employee that started working at soul cycle worked for at least two weeks at the front desk, whether you were the CFO or whether you were the bike maintenance person, because the truth is, we all would say that you learn more by being in your business for, you know, for two weeks than you do being at your desk for two [00:18:00] months.
And that is really the truth about it. And then on top of it, besides from just training, you know, people to. You know, be hospitalitarians. Elizabeth and I did a lot of work on our own partnership and relationship as the years progressed. Very early on, we found a coach, we started to work with her and we really learned how to communicate with each other, how to lead.
And as we would be learning these lessons, we would teach them to the rest of our employees. And so ultimately we became a culture of You know, transparent communication, we became a culture where giving each other feedback became the norm. And so because people were able to communicate with each other so well internally and because they were so happy because of it, it was kind of like our internal culture was reflected in the way that the customers felt about the business, which I think is really true.
I've interviewed honestly thousands of founders now and I [00:19:00] see this pattern where the founders that seem to build these. Big businesses that expand so much beyond just, you know, their initial vision are the ones that have continued to invest in themselves and are really reflective and have upleveled in that way.
I'd love to know like what some of those specific things are that you learned through that coach, like how did you learn to have conversations with feedback? Totally. And peoplehood because so much of what we're actually teaching at peoplehood is what Elizabeth and I learned ourselves in those sessions.
So the truth You know, the spoiler alert is the main skill that you learn in any sort of a coaching session or the ones that we did with each other, with another person, I mean, two founders, is it, you know, two CEOs is a difficult thing. We really learned how to listen to each other. Elizabeth and I, when we have differences, when we have decisions to make, we usually do those meetings in two parts.
We come to the table, usually our coach is [00:20:00] there, and we each bring kind of the way that we feel about it, and one person talks, and another person listens, and the other person talks, and another person listens, and then we kind of wrap up for the day. Because, Especially when there's conflict or two points of view, it is very hard to pause and absorb somebody else's perspective in that moment.
You know, to really understand somebody else's world, somebody else's story, why somebody else thinks, you know, something different than what you are thinking is correct. And then we usually come back the next day or a few days later, and I have to tell you that, like, Five out of six times we come back to the table and Elizabeth will say, You know what?
I totally see it your way. That's the way we should do it. And then I'll come and say the exact same thing. I see it your way. But I actually think that's one of the things that's made us extremely successful because, you know, you know, We are very different people and we do see things in very different ways.
And when you are forced to [00:21:00] absorb somebody else's opinion rather than create this whole insular world where you only see one thing one way, I do think it's a real recipe for success, especially if you have a partner or somebody that you respect in that way. I do the same thing in my marriage. My husband and I have really learned to communicate in this very same way.
And I will say that it has been transformative for us because my husband and I are also different and we, we parent differently and we spend our time differently. And I do think that this ability to take in another human being's perspective and integrate it into your own, when you talk about leveling up or growing, you know, I would credit, Elizabeth and my husband to being the two people that have created the most growth for me as an adult.
Because of the way that I have sort of been forced to learn how to communicate and take in their worldviews, they've really expanded mine. That's such good advice. I have a very [00:22:00] quick message from our sponsor, and honestly, we never do ad breaks on the show because I am just really picky about the sponsors that we work with and who we want to promote.
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You can install Lifetimely by AMP now on the Shopify app store. Okay, let's get back into the show. I have one more question about the SoulCycle journey and that I want to understand how things are getting started with peoplehood and your vision there. The Equinox Partnership, how did that come about and how did that change your world?
Yeah. Well, okay. So, you know, Elizabeth and I were like two women who started this thing in the rear lobby of the building. We didn't know anything about it. I mean, neither of us ever taught a spin class in our whole life. But, you know. We understood brand, we understood people, we understood hospitality, and all of a sudden, you know, SoulCycle started to get like all this buzz in New York City.
And so Equinox called us pretty early on, their [00:25:00] CEO called us, I guess, you know, he'd been hearing a lot, we'd been making a lot of noise in the space. And we started to have some initial conversations pretty early on, but we weren't quite ready to, you know, sell any of the business yet. And then, After we had about seven locations, we began to see that we had created a marketplace and people were coming into that marketplace.
We began to see, you know, competitors and, you know, it was just starting to feel like we wanted to grow quickly. We wanted to be first to market. We really felt like we had a right to own that market. And you know, And I'm sure that a lot of people listening to this will, you know, completely identify with this.
But one thing I will say as a founder, as a first time founder, and also as a female founder, I think there's a lot of times that you think that other people know how to do it the right way. You know, we doubt that our instincts that have taken us so far, the very same instincts that have actually led us to whatever [00:26:00] success we have in the first place, All of a sudden we think somebody else, there must be real grownups in the room.
Somebody else must really know how to do this. Right. In retrospect, it's kind of funny. I think, you know, Equinox was best in class. Nobody had ever created a fitness, you know, establishment like they had. We really wanted a win. And so we took them on as partners and they, you know, they, They were good partners, you know, for a long time, for a long time, you know, we kind of did what we did and, and they helped us in certain areas.
And that all went really, really well. And we scaled for quite a while with them and we were partners for quite a bit. And then, and then it just felt like, you know, there were, you know, we wanted to grow in different ways. And so, Elizabeth and I ultimately decided, you know, we didn't have the same vision for the future of the company and so we decided to part ways.
Okay. And so then this takes us to peoplehood. [00:27:00] And if somebody, I've, I've done one of the gathers and I thought it was incredible. If somebody walks into your space for the first time, what will they experience? Yeah. So if someone walks into peoplehood for the first time, they're going to experience hospitality.
Hopefully we're going to make you feel like you matter. You can grab a coffee. It's, it's kind of a great little retail space in Chelsea, and then we also have our digital gathers, which feel very similar. They feel like a very safe and cozy space. But you'll come into a gather room and a guide will meet you there.
And the guide is a storyteller. They're an empath. They're really there to hold space and keep the structure of the space so everybody feels safe to share. We start with some music and some breath work. There's some group sharing. Then there's some one on one sharing where we practice active listening.
And hopefully then there's some sort of a takeaway that you can take into your life, something practical that you can take out of that room. So, you know, while you're practicing, you know, in our breakouts, we do something we call higher listening. And just like physical [00:28:00] fitness, we really believe that listening and empathy are muscles that you need to build.
Yeah. If you continue to practice having conversations, In a way where you actually take a pause and you think about your response rather than just reacting. Eventually, you begin to hear people in a different way. They feel received in a different way. And you begin to see the world around you change.
And so we have peoplehood where you come with a bunch of strangers. It's time to kind of process your own thoughts. Hear other people's stories. You begin to recognize yourself in other people. Feel less lonely and less alone. You know, become a better listener. And then we also have couplehood where you can come with a partner or a spouse.
And that's really great because, you know, I don't know about you, but you know, my husband and I spend a lot of time together, but we do a lot of talking about who's, who's booking plane tickets for Christmas and who's ordering the groceries. And so I don't, I don't often spend 15 minutes looking into his eyes, asking him what's keeping him up at night.
Yeah, I can't remember the last time I had that conversation. I mean, our baby's [00:29:00] keeping us up at night, but right, right. But it's wild. Yeah. I mean, it's really wild how quickly you can, you can connect in a deeper way with somebody, you know, and so, you know, we really believe that this world has become You know, really isolating or post a global pandemic.
People are spending more time on their phones, especially social media all day long. We're more connected and yet we're lonelier than ever. And I would say even more than loneliness, what we're doing by spending so much time on our phones is that we are really stripping. our human being skills, you know, our peopling skills out of our bodies.
Uh, I look, I have two children and they have a six year age gap. I have an 18 year old and a 12 year old. And I even look at the difference in the way the two of them communicate. And it's really staggering, you know, how I remember thinking how horrible my 18 year old was on her, you know, social media all day.
And now I look at my 12 year old and think that was nothing. So, So it's really interesting how our world [00:30:00] continues to change and we're really spinning away from this idea of human connection. And I think we've all seen, you know, our Surgeon General put out a massive report this year talking about how loneliness is really becoming an epidemic.
There's a lot of conflict in the world. And we really need to We really need to practice these skills if we're gonna, you know, continue to thrive. Our emotional wellness, our social wellness actually predicts the length and the health of our life more than anything else. Wow. How, once you kind of like were forming this idea of, okay, this is, this is what I want to do next.
How long did that take for it to, to materialize into what is a very clear structured product that you're offering in this, in, in the peoplehood space? How long did that take and like, how do you do that? Yeah. Well, look. You know. It's very intentional. It's not just like you turn up and there's a therapist.
Like, it's [00:31:00] this beautiful, intentional experience. Definitely. Listen, SoulCycle was architected kind of the same way. I think there's a real art to, you know, experience design. And it's funny because that's probably sort of the theater kid in me. You know, I've watched so many productions SoulCycle, it should feel like curtain up when somebody walks in and curtain down when they leave.
And not just in the room, kind of when they cross the threshold. And so, We really thought at Peoplehood, first of all, we've been working on the project for over four years. It started before COVID. And then, you know, like many other founders, I'm sure people's products have taken many different forms. We, we started workshopping it IRL before COVID.
Then during COVID we would develop a little bit of an app. And then as COVID was ending, we realized we needed to have both a digital and an IRL offering. And so we've sort of seen this whole, this whole journey progress. But I do think that, you know, it is one of those things where [00:32:00] you really have to think about how you want somebody to, to feel, what you want them to take away.
And we have worked with scientists and breathwork specialists and rabbis and priests. And therapists. Wow. And you know, AA leaders and all different types, authors, all different types of people to really figure out, you know, if we were putting together one hour that was going to help you connect with yourself and learn to connect with other people differently, what would.
You know, those components look like, and then how do we take you through an emotional journey so that you have an aha moment, so that you feel better when you leave than when you walked in, so that when you go into the world, you have something tangible to take with you. All of those things became really important.
And then also, of course, how do you keep the space safe? You know, who is going to hold that space? You know, you'll notice in the room, our guide always goes first. They always share first. And by doing that, they sort of permission the whole room to tell a little piece of their story. And so all of those [00:33:00] decisions became super intentional.
From a marketing perspective, I know that you said that, you know, really building community has been at the core of the way that you've marketed both businesses. But what was some of the, what are some of the really kind of tangible ways that you are getting people into experience peoplehood for the first time?
Because it's a very different landscape now to when you first started and got traction for SoulCycle. So I'd love to know what you're doing differently. Yeah. Well, listen, I will say it is a very different landscape, uh, and it is certainly, it's certainly not easy. You know, there's so much noise in the world.
There's so many offerings that are. You know, taking up people's time. And the truth is, you know, we always say that no matter what we're creating, we're still competing with Netflix and Instagram. You know, it doesn't matter what the product is. So true. Because you're just competing for people's time. Uh, and so for us, we have, again, really focused on, um, tapping into existing communities, you know, [00:34:00] communities that are already sort of blossoming but where people may want to get to know each other more, where there are like minded interests.
I think that a lot of the offerings that we've seen are people who are it having some sort of a life transition, whether you're a new mom or newly wed or new to New York or you've just gotten divorced or it's your first year at college. It really feels like, you know, appealing to people who are in moments where they're really trying to move themselves from one place to the next.
We have a lot of really interesting, our space in New York is really great, so we have a lot of really interesting events and experts come. So you invite people in to bring their own communities and host events in there and experience that. Definitely experts that are talking about topics that are super relevant and helping us create conversations around them afterward.
So we've really been trying to plug into, into, you know, community and communities to build, to build this time around. [00:35:00] And how are you thinking about the digital piece of this? I know that you're also offering the digital gathers. What does the digital marketing component look like for you guys now? Yeah.
Digital marketing is, has been really interesting. And what I will say is that we have really, you know, it's still such early days, you know, we're only, we've only been open for about six or seven months. And so, you know, really trying to make sure that product Market fit digitally is correct before we begin a big digital spend loyalty programs, bring a friend programs, you know, again, I really do believe sort of in the whole evangelist.
If somebody wants to bring a friend, you know, your product is working. And so digital has also still been a lot of organic. How does it feel different the second time around for you six months in now compared to six months in with SoulCycle? How does it feel as a founder? I would say it feels harder this time around, which is so interesting.
You know what's ahead? Yeah. Well, yeah, I think, first of all, you know, I [00:36:00] think the first time around, your bar is so much lower. Yeah. You know, I think that just, you know, everything was such a thrill. Every person that came in was such a thrill. And not that it isn't now, because still my favorite, absolute favorite moments, I've actually started leading motherhood gathers.
And some female founder gathers. Okay, amazing. And I will say, I love being in the room. I love, I love seeing, you know, like, people coming and having those aha moments. I love hearing people's stories. I love watching them in the product. The digital cohorts are also amazing. We are actually offering a cohort right now, you know, finding your true love, you know, and that, that's, that's great.
I've actually been in that even though I've been married for 20 years. I've been, I've been in that just taking the course and it's fantastic. I mean, it's interesting. We've, we've learned to connect digitally so incredibly well post COVID. I will say in some ways, the digital gathers are even more intimate than the ones that are in the room.
People are really uninhibited when they're in their own rooms and their own pajamas, and they'll tell you a lot more [00:37:00] sometimes. And I will say that it's been, you know, those are my favorite moments. The moments that are tough are the moments when I'm comparing myself to myself. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm a bit older than I was then.
So I'm always sort of double checking myself, like, you know, am, am, am I young enough to do this? Am I current enough to do this? All the things. Yeah. And then of course, when you, when you've been lucky enough to have a giant success, it's really hard not to, not to judge yourself and to, to feel like, well, it happened after six months last time I've been open for seven months.
What does this mean? My husband and I were talking about it the other day, and I was saying it would have almost been better, you know, if SoulCycle was like my third one. Right. Yes. Right? I mean, sequentially, it would have made a lot more sense, but really just trying to keep my head down. And I will say something else that's been really interesting is, um, my short experience at WeWork, I really learned how to scale things globally.
Mm. Um, which is also a whole other mind bender. And so, you know, when I [00:38:00] really go in now, I really tried to look down and sort of turn off my peripheral vision and think, you know, one customer, very happy, somebody who comes and gets something out of this, that they take into their world. And because of it, their dinner table becomes a little bit better.
The, you know, their team at their office can collaborate differently. Their marriage is a little bit stronger. Like I'm really trying to focus on those metrics just to really keep myself in the whole sort of product market fit game, which I know is such early stages. It's hard. I mean, I have spent the last decade and a half.
Thinking about scale, a word I didn't even know when I started SoulCycle. Thinking about exit, a word that I didn't even know when I started SoulCycle. You know, and to the point of your original question, I never really start these things sort of thinking about, you know, sort of what is the big financial windfall.
It's really always about if I make a great product, people will come and be happy. That part will happen. What are you [00:39:00] Looking at now that you're thinking, okay, I don't want to do this again. This is a mistake that I made the first time around. I don't want to do it again, both for yourself, but also for people who are embarking on this for the first time.
And they're kind of like, they don't even know what's ahead. Yeah. Look, I don't know if there's an, I don't want to do this again, but I really do think that, you know, as a founder, you really have to know what you're signing up for. I can't tell you how many times, you know, I'm, you speaking at business schools or talking to would be entrepreneurs and I'm sure That we all look at the entrepreneurs that have had great success and we think, wow, you know, that that's amazing that that happened.
But the truth is that I say to everybody, unless it is an idea that wakes you up in the middle of the night, like you're keeping a pad on the side of your bed. The truth is that Being an entrepreneur is really hard work in every way, whether it [00:40:00] is, you know, the beginning, trying to find product market fit as you scale, managing a team, trying to understand how skill sets shift and different people are now good for different jobs or not suited for different jobs.
As businesses grow, then what happens when your business is so successful and you take it to the next place. And then at the end, Business begins to cannibalize itself. And now you don't know how to grow from growing all of a sudden you were this explosive growth business. And now all of a sudden somebody has moved the finish line and going from sort of what was explosive to what now needs to be the next goal seems daunting.
I just think that, you know, being a founder is really, uh, it's really a 24 hour thing. And I think it's unrealistic to not think that. And so. It's interesting when you talk about second time around. I really, you know, I remind myself of that all the time that sort of a lot of it is in the details. A lot of it is really being in the business.
That's another thing I would say, you know, founders and [00:41:00] CEOs have to be in their businesses. If you're not a user, you have no idea what's going on in the business. I love to ask customers for their feedback. It is the biggest learnings that I can get. If you ask one person and they're nice enough to tell you the truth, you can pretty much know that 50 other people think the same thing.
They just weren't brave enough to tell you. But I really do think that. You know, something that I really try to remind myself is to be in the business because I would say, you know, after experiencing success, it's easy to create teams and delegate and sit on top of it. But at this part, at this time in the life of this business, it's very important to be in the product.
I'd love to just end with a resource recommendation. And sometimes people recommend a podcast, a book, sometimes it's, you know, something less tangible, a habit or a mindset thing, but just for people who are kind of embarking on this thing that you've been doing now for many years, you think would really help them.
Yeah. Look, I would say the transformative thing for me was getting [00:42:00] a coach. And I know that it can be a bit of an investment, but whether you can afford it once a quarter, whether you can afford it twice a year, I do think really having another person there to ask you some questions and give you the time to think about it is really the most helpful thing that I've ever done for myself in business.
I am. Often surprised, especially in a startup or a business that's scaling. We are moving so quickly. One decision ends and the next one begins, you know, and I just think that. Without having the ability to step away, it is hard to have new ideas. It's hard to innovate. It's hard to be the leader that you want to be.
It's hard to be the human being that you want to be. And I just, I really do believe that there's no growth without stepping back. I can't tell you how many times a year I have to look at my calendar and say, I am doing this all wrong. And that's usually after I meet with my coach because [00:43:00] I'll realize, Gosh, I'm trying to move the business forward by focusing on digital marketing when the truth is like, I need to innovate, right?
If I'm sitting here spending an hour talking about how I'm not happy with this part of the product, then what am I scaling out here? You know, I need to rejigger my time. And I find that I have those conversations with my coach, who's, who's been our coach now for, you Gosh, probably about 15 years. But I will say that I do think that if you can find somebody who you feel like is a good fit for you and you can at least do a quarterly check in, I think it's wildly valuable.
That's great advice. I do actually have one more question and that's because you've had such a, such a successful co founder relationship. How does somebody go about finding a co founder and what should they be looking for? It's interesting. Something I talk about a lot at Peoplehood is one of the things that made me really understand that people needed relational skills were that my husband and I went to this incredible couple's seminar.
It was called Getting the Love You Want. Amazing. [00:44:00] And the two, the two therapists got up there and they gave us this statistic. They said that first marriages have a 50 percent divorce rate. Second marriages have a 70 percent divorce rate. And third marriages have a 90 something percent divorce rate.
Showing you that it has nothing to do with the person that you're choosing. And it has way more to do about how hard you're willing to learn and work on being in a relationship. And I think it's no different with a co founder. I think Elizabeth and I are a great fit because we bring all of our values.
Very different people. That's actually very different skills and I would really suggest that. That is one thing if I had to make a suggestion, I'd say choose somebody that's different than you. There are days and there were there are days now and there were days during our SoulCycle days where I would just say, Oh my God, this is it.
Like we're done. Like we crashed this website. And for Elizabeth, that would be no big deal because tech was not a problem for her. There would be days that she would come into me and say, like, I can't deal with the people anymore. And I would say, I got it. People for me is no problem. and I really feel like we kept each other [00:45:00] going.
So I would say finding somebody with some skills that are different than yours, but then more than that, I would say working on your relationship, investing in it and making sure that you have a commitment to having really good communication. Julie, so much for coming on Female Founder World. This has been a lot of fun.
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