How Is Peloton So Good at Getting Us To Exercise?

Behavior change is hard.

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Secrets behind the science of Change. The Science of Change podcast is presented by Set Sail, world's number one revenue execution platform. I am beyond excited about today's episode of the Science of Change. I'm talking with David Packles, the Senior Director of Product Management at Peloton. So if you're into behavioral science or have an interest in how the products we use can help drive behavior change, Peloton is kind of like the holy grail. This is a company that is barely six years old, but has already completely changed the home fitness game. I've been smitten with Peloton for quite a while. Confession. I don't use the bike or treadmill, but I am addicted to my Peloton app. What I love most about them is that as much as behavioral scientists like.

To think we figured out human behavior.

Peloton has come along and managed to show us a few things. Basically, this is an incredibly helpful and intuitive product that gets people to do an incredibly difficult thing exercising at home on a frequent basis. And whether they know it or not, they've done it by using many of the tactics that behavioral scientists like me have studied for years. So get ready. In this episode, you're going to learn the entire recipe for Peloton success.

So, in our world, behavior change is basically this interesting combination of making something really motivating and and really easy. And obviously, Peloton's very motivating. But one of my pet hypothesis is that you've also made it wildly easier to work out by making workouts shorter. How do you think about the length of a workout? For those who haven't used Peloton, you've ranged from five minutes to I don't know what's your longest workout? 90.

We have 90 minute workouts. I think we had some 120 at some point too. Yeah.

Wow.

So how do you think about friction and making things easier and maybe specifically around length?

So I will say just before I get into length, which also is an important driver, I think the thing about making it easiest is basically making it more accessible, putting it in your home and having a workout that is not a sleeper and not a snoozer, that you actually are motivated by an instructor who's playing amazing music, who's motivating you, who's telling these immersive stories. And you don't have to get in your car and drive to the gym in order to have that. You literally can roll out of bed and be on there in two minutes. So I think the core of the easiest is removing all of those barriers. If you have 10 minutes, you have 15 minutes, you have 30 minutes, you can roll out of bed and get on your bike or your tread or do a yoga class or whatever it is. So that's kind of home fitness in general. But as for length specifically, I think length is an interesting one because if you look at what Peloton was inspired by which were these boutique fitness classes, the standard length was 45 minutes. It was basically you would go to a Barry's Boot Camp or Soul Cycle or whatever it was and and ride or work out for 45 minutes. And that was like the standard. And actually early on that was our standard too. We would have pretty much all 45 minute workouts. And what we actually noticed is that people were taking shorter and shorter workouts, that they were preferring the 30 minutes, they were preferring the 20 minutes. And so we started kind of gearing our programming to be a little bit shorter. And we do think that like the idea of just working out for 30 minutes or 20 minutes is much more accessible and less intimidating than 45 minutes, clearly. But we also found was even though we started kind of bringing down the length of classes, people would create their own kind of regimen. So instead of just taking a 30 minute like cycling class, they would then take a 10 minute stretch or a 10 minute arms class afterwards. So the length certainly made it more accessible because it was like, hey, I have 30 minutes, I'm going to do a 30 minute pride, I'm going to sweat. But then when they're on it, I'm already sweating, I'm already doing my thing. I might as well tack on that additional 10 minute arms or whatever it was to kind of round out my workout that inspired one of our more recent features, stacked classes, which made it easier for our members to basically create a stack for themselves to take one class after the other. But certainly I do believe it's about like the in, you don't have to commit to 45 minutes to still have a great workout, you know, and again, that's just like, I think one of the biggest barriers.

So we're already into the behavioral science. What he's describing is something we call foot in the door, which means you're basically making a small initial ask up front, in this case say a 20 minute bike ride with the idea that once they're on the bike, users would be more willing to add an additional 10 minute ride or stretching class. One classic study that we like to reference involves someone being asked if they'd be willing to put up a small sign in their window that says please drive safe. Then they're asked to put up a large sign in their yard that says drive carefully. More people say yes to the large sign if they'd already been asked to put up the sign. Small sign.

So for those folks who don't know, stacking as David described, is just a way to combine classes into kind of maybe a choose your own adventure model. Any insights from launching it at Peloton?

We're very much inspired by behavior that already exists and then making it easier. I think it's pretty much all technology. It's like finding a human need or something that's already happening and making it easier to do so. But I think with stacking, there was already people doing it. They were already talking about it. They even called it stacked. Right. So when we launched the feature, not only did it make the lives easier for the people who are already doing it, but for people who like never really thought about it, we were all of a sudden saying, hey, might as well tack on a 10 minute stretch at the end of this. And we've actually seen more people actually making it happen. So kind of systemizing it and making it a part of our core feature set actually expanded the amount of people who are doing something that our kind of cornerstone, most engaged members were already doing.

This is fascinating because before I co founded Irrational Labs, which is a behavioral science firm, I was a product manager for Intuit. So there's this idea in product development that you have to constantly look at data from your users and try to figure out how to make the product better. Obviously this can be difficult. There's a lot of noise if you're just looking at a small number of people who are doing one thing with your product, you may be projecting that everybody would want to do that exact same thing. So you have a problem of what we call self selection. You're only looking at the people who are already highly motivated. What Peloton has figured out is how to use insights from observing a smaller segment of their users and extrapolate that to what all users may be interested in.

I think the biggest thing is that you can still get insights from the few, but you have to figure out how to apply it to many. The way that we do it at Peloton is like when we actually do our concept testing or prototyping or whatever it is, we make sure that we're selecting a cross section of our member base rather than just catering to the folks who asked for the feature. So that's one thing. But in general we never. A lot of times with Peloton is like a little bit like you asked, we gave it to you. I mean, there's not much you can really do within the world of like, I want to take a class after another one. So certainly it worked. I think it's most interesting for things like social features because as folks may know, Peloton is a very thriving community and a very engaged community. You know, we have like a 400,000 person Facebook page where people are talking about Peloton, talking about their favorite instructors. It's splintered into thousands of groups ranging from like PowerZone training to shorties to VU crew, fans of Cody. And so I think it's most interesting were for things like social specifically because we'll get an insight from a really deep behavior that that user that those people are doing. And then we like tweak that to find it, to make it as accessible to as many people as possible. So a great example of this is this idea of here now, which is I think one of it's like a no duh feature. But I'm like really proud of it. I think all good features are like after the fact. It's like, oh, well, why didn't you think about that at the beginning? We saw a lot of people scheduling workouts to take together start at exactly the same time. And people generally like doing that. It was motivating to a lot of folks. But when we put that in front of like our every user, people who are less social, who had less friends on the platform, whatever it was, they just were like, well, I want my 5 minutes, 10 minutes. I don't always start at the same time. Why would I do that? And so I think that that kind of led to this thing. It was like, okay, we need to offer flexibility, but also the ability to like work out with friends if you want to. That kind of led us to this idea of Here Now. So back up one second. One of the core of Peloton's social experience, it has this idea of a leaderboard. You can essentially race people and see what their output is and you can high five each other. Kind of a cornerstone in connected fitness now, but Peloton was the first to really do it. Bring it home. So here now, instead of just saying, here's everybody who's taken the class and we're going to simulate the feeling of being with each other, it says, hey, here's everybody who's in the same class as of right now. Meaning that they could be at the beginning of the class, at the end of the class, but all that matters is that they're there and you can interact with them. It's that feeling of connectedness, togetherness. And that I think took an insight that was used by the 5%, 10% of our hyper engaged social users and said, how do we make this as accessible to as many people as possible? Which brought us to Here Now. And then it was something like 50% plus people used here Now. And so we went from a niche feature into now. It is today. The latest innovation on that is this idea of sessions, which is actually like starting at the same time is powerful. So basically, not only can you see people who are here now, but every five minutes each class kind of starts a new room, basically. And you all start at the same time. And so when you're finishing that first hill that Robin has had you go on, you're all high defiving each other because you're all finished the hill at the same time. So again, yeah, it's about testing with folks who are outside of your super user base and also just breaking your idea open. Like, don't be so loyal to the thing that folks are asking for. I think it's really important to experiment and kind of like see what's really going on here. It's about flexibility. It's about, you know, that I just don't want to be alone. Right?

See, this is why I was so excited to talk to this guy. I mean, Peloton's entire story is like a behavioral science textbook right here. He's talking about a form of accountability. Our behavior changes when we think someone else is watching us. When we think we're being observed. We do things that align with the person we want to be in the eyes of others versus the person we may be when no one is watching. We self regulate. In fact, just displaying images of watching eyes has been shown to make people behave in more socially desirable ways. Not littering, making donations and cleaning up after ourselves. Peloton is tapping into this accountability idea where with their coordinated start time, now it's really not you on a bike alone, it's you with everyone else doing the same thing at the same time. And by the way, this is also a trend in education called cohorts. Everyone starts an online course at the same time versus on a random day. And just by starting with other people and going through it together, you increase the chance that you will complete the course.

You notice then that people are completing more and coming back more. Like when you launch a feature like Here now, does this actually work to drive either longer sessions, more sessions, completed sessions?

I mean, the data certainly points to it. We've seen an increase in total workouts, total watch time, active days. Those are a lot of our kind of core metrics, kind of as we introduce a lot of these things. But what's really hard with Peloton is that there are so many factors that are driving these things. It's really hard to say, oh, it was just here now, or it was just challenges or it was just programs. And certainly we do tests and do a B test and all this stuff, but because we're talking about retention and engagement over such a long time period, it's kind of hard to like run an a B test, to show variances and do that consistently while still pushing things out that are meaningful. So. But to that point, we have seen an increase. I think it is a lot of these features, but I also think the core and one of the things that we do hear a lot from users is it's not just accountability to the software or the fact that I have a bike. I care about showing up for Alex. I'm letting him into my home two to three times a week and like, I need to show up for him. Like, I need to feel like if I don't show up or if I leave early, I'm somehow giving up on Alex. And that's a really crazy thing because sure, when you take it live, Alex can see that you're working out and shout you out occasionally. But like, even when you're taking it on demand, still people feel accountability to Alex. So you create this, like, accountability.

Okay, let's move on to members. So I want to touch on streaks and Leaderboards. Let's first dive into streaks. So streaks are something where, you know, highly motivating for people who are in it and potentially lots of downside if you miss a streak. If you can't get started on a streak from missing one. How have pelotons thought about streaks in general to keep us motivated?

As someone who has lost his 300 plus week streak, I know it's tough, crushing, but yes, yes, it hurts. But I think I want to give you my answer to that and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about like I want to bring it back to what we were talking about at the very beginning. But it's double edged sword. Losing a streak is really hard, especially for things that like require like daily usage. Working out is not something you're like you're not doing hiit workouts seven times a week. In fact, that's like something you shouldn't be doing. Recovery is a very, very important part of any successful fitness routine. So we're not like a headspace. Daily meditation or daily usage is the only way to go.

So he's not wrong here. This is truly the downside of streaks. It can be extremely demotivating to break a streak so much that it can be counterproductive because it's, it can be so demotivating that people actually disengage with the program altogether. That's actually another way that peloton was smart. They highlight both daily and weekly streaks. So if you break your daily streak, you can still keep your weekly streak intact by working out the next day. Weekly streaks give you fewer opportunities for failure.

We have this problem of self selection where people, there are some people maybe who, who are more intuitively understand that streaks could be fun and interesting and keep you going. And some folks who are like, you know, I don't really care, I'm focused on other things. By the way, those are usually the majority of people. And yet streaks can be very interesting and fun. So any ways to engage people in these kind of tracking mechanisms for, for folks who may not yet be engaged?

The way we do it is we just key things like when you first turn on your bike or your soon be your app. Whatever you see, like, welcome back, continue your 52 week streak. Here are the active days that you've worked out this week. Just like gentle reminders that what you're doing counts a week, you're having a good week or like it's always a new start. Just like those artifacts and placing them like where it matters I think is important. I think we can be doing more there, like before you start a class and after you finish a class, working on that type of stuff. But in general, we do just like those gentle nudges, which is just like, hey, you're doing good. We are tracking your stuff, even though you don't have to necessarily pay attention to it. I think the one thing I would just say, say about tracking is that especially with fitness, which is largely aspirational, and the reality is, like, humans, we fall on and off the track regularly. You know, for me personally, I go on like two month, where I'm just like, I'm in this. And then like, take a month off and I'm just like, I'm not in this. I gotta do. I've gotta be a dad, I gotta do whatever. And so I think that it's important to be able to offer members an in even if they had not a great month. And I think there are certain, I guess, platforms and products which don't really respect that as much. But like, at Peloton, at any point, we will welcome you back. At any point, we will essentially bring you back into the fold and Alex will be there and Robin will be there to bring you back and get you back up to speed. And I think that's an important part of getting people over the hump about coming back to working out again.

Yeah. And being nicer to ourselves if we miss a week.

Yeah, yeah. It's okay. It's fine. Yeah.

So in the behavioral science world, we worship something called implementation intentions. This is basically where once you decide you want to do something like run a marathon or write a novel, you say how you're going to do it, where you're going to do it, when you're going to do it, and doing this makes you more likely to actually do it. Simply asking people to develop an implementation intention triggers an association between the desired behavior and a concrete future moment, making us more likely to do it. Implementation intentions have been shown to work in a variety of settings, from flu.

Shots to voting to exercise.

So I started wondering how Peloton thinks about their users when it comes to planning or scheduling their workouts and getting them to commit to their future self.

There are a lot of people who are like, the best way to commit is be like, in January, I'm working out all 30 days. And that's it. That's something that we do. Like challenges, we offer, like these jump starts, like January workout, 30 or 30 days, whatever it was, I think for us it's about offering as many different options in for the different types of people, you know, programs is a way in basically being like, hey, I'm going to commit to a month of ABS training, right. And essentially I'm going to strengthen my core for the month of July. And those are for people who want more guidance in being told what to do. Another pullback in is like, I see things in a black and white way. It's kind of like if you're dieting, you don't eat bread. I'm going to work out 30 days, right? I'm going to go all in for this month. That's another way in. We do that with challenge. Then the other side of it is like, is that intrigue? Like there's something happening and exciting on the platform that I don't want to miss. And we do that through like, just like a bit of like an entertainment lens on our program. So whether that's like this Peloton Music Festival or it's about these like more entertainment based series like the Jess King Experience or Sundays with Love or Alex's Ride to Greatness, these are all pulling you back not just from a tracking perspective, but from an entertainment perspective. It's like, can't miss tv. I want to see what's up. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, that wasn't that bad. I guess I'll come back tomorrow. So I think that entertainment thing is also there. And then there's a lot of stuff that we're working on in the future around social accountability and using your community or squads or your friends to essentially bring you back into the fold as well. So that's the other piece of it.

Yes, we're very present biased, so we want something immediately gratifying. And so it seems like you're creating reasons for people to have kind of immediate gratification, whether it be music or fomo. Missing out, little regretted version never hurt anyone.

Yeah, I mean that's how the platform was built. I think we are about training, but we're also about having fun and entertaining you.

Let's talk about a big one, which is leaderboards.

So I know I've been quite the Peloton fangirl so far, but this was my rare opportunity with David to be a little contrarian. Behavioral scientists are a bit skeptical when it comes to leaderboards because who are they really motivating? It's the people at the top, right? If you're in 200th place out of 300 people in your class, how motivated are you? By seeing that you might Be able to inch up two spots to 198. Leaderboards serve the leaders, the people at the front of the pack. And I was surprised that David actually seemed to agree, kind of.

Leaderboards can certainly be polarizing. I think with Peloton specific leaderboards were a part of our DNA from day one. And it wasn't always about competition, but it was the best way to represent community in a class digitally. And I think if you look across the board in all of these really strong connected fitness products that are now out in the market, things largely like peloton opening the door, a lot of them have these leaderboard concepts because it's frankly just a good way to feel that you're not alone. There are other people there. And so like when we think about the leaderboard, competition is one piece, but the other piece is presence. And how do you represent presence of others? It just happens to be the best form factor. But you know, if you look at things like recently we introduced this idea of strive score which shows like how hard you're working at whatever part of the workout based on your heart rate. All of a sudden now you don't need output to feel the presence of other people. And you can imagine us playing with different form factors that are maybe not the vertical screen or whatever it is just to feel that like, hey, like I'm here with you working out. It's the same feeling of like looking left and right and like you not doing the sit up that you were supposed to be doing. But like the person to your right and the person to your left is so yeah, I just think leaderboard is just happens to be a successful form factor. I am very excited about the future. Not just within the world of like a 2D plane, but when you look at like vrar and this idea of presence of others that could be anonymized, but you also feel that they're next to you. That's the feeling we're really trying to elicit. And the leaderboard is what we found is like a successful way to do so. So anyway, but that all being said core to like our instructors like warm up chat that they talk about every time they say keep the leaderboard if it, if it helps you hide it, if it hurts you. And that's like an important part. It's like it's not going to be for everybody. It's okay to turn it off.

How do you think about what you measure members on? It seems like the current point of view is number of workouts. So for folks who aren't peloton enthusiasts. The instructor may call your name out and say, congrats on your. You hit 100 and list out the username. In one world, we are what we measure. Have you guys had internal debates on changing that or how you kind of help people figure out what they're striving for?

The thing is, that number of workouts is not just the thing that we created. It's actually the thing that people talk about. I guess the reason Century Club is such a big deal is because people talk about 100 workouts as a thing. So it's again, like going back to what people are already doing and kind of latching onto that. That's largely why it's driven by that. It's just like a simple thing to latch onto. Things like output and more detailed metrics are tough to kind of grab onto. We've tried to kind of simplify that with Strive Score. So Strive Score again, it's like an aggregate score of the time you spend in each heart rate. So that you can say, I was a 21 in this 20 minute class yesterday. I was a did I work harder, Whatever it is. So it's all about simplifying. I think people want really simplified things that they can grab onto. So, yeah, I think that that's the crux of it. It's not just the thing that we're pushing, but the thing that people gravitate towards as the way that they recognize their success.

I personally focus on the level, so if I'm on a 7 or an 8, so you could imagine a world of rewarding people for trying harder.

Yeah. What you're saying, I think is the other part of this is that yes, you can latch onto what people are already doing, but then there are practices that are more others. And how can we, as peloton, I like to say, make athletic training accessible to everyone? It shouldn't be scary to train. You should be comfortable training. Like, you should be comfortable experimenting and having a regimen. And how do we make that accessible to more people? So. And that's something that we are thinking a lot about at Peloton.

Okay, what about variety? So another kind of hard question, should I be working out somebody, but I'll use myself with Jesse every time I work out or should I try to vary it up? Will I be a more consistent, more frequent exerciser if I'm consistent with my type of exercise or instructor versus kind of, you know, play around and try different things all the time?

Vary within reason. I do think going back to my Point, especially with Pel Done, creating a relationship with one or a few instructors is part of what keeps you coming back and feeling accountable. So I do think varying is important both from like an instructor slash method or workout type. But I also think that it's important to feel like you're coming home to something and it's not like it new every single time. You know, you can apply it to like when you're running outside. Right? I run in Prospect Park. I'm going to go to Prospect park, but sometimes I'm going to cut in that shortcut versus, you know, going around every single time. So I do believe that there's, there should be some variance, but around a lot of the same general areas.

Got it. So some variety is the spice of life sometimes. And do you guys experiment with this? Like, are you trying to nudge people to do more consistent or higher variety of work and then measure like, do people stick around on the platform? What's churn?

Yeah, I mean, we generally do believe that a full body workout, like mixed modality workout is the future of home fitness. I think both for like our brand and think beyond the fact that we're a bike company, but also like for general health. You're most healthy if you're doing different things. Like if you're not on the bike every single day, you're also doing some squats and strength and cardio and maybe running outside every so often. I do think that that's something that we are pushing for as far as how we measure it. Like, we measure like percentage of folks who are taking more than one discipline, film discipline modalities and the types of kind of mixed results they have. What, you know, what percentage of time are they spending in this and that. We have a cool visualization of like a triangle of like different types of related disciplines and where people fit amongst that triangle. It's pretty cool. So if you're looking at strength, recovery and cardio, like where are people fitting like and where are we seeing clustering? And then how is that changing over time? But yeah, and then as far as like, how does it measure churn? We, we do know that people who are, who, who have variety are more likely to, to continue using peloton. That being said, like, the retention of peloton is insane. As is we have people stick with. Once you have a peloton like you are, you're using it for years. It's the most engaged fitness product of all time. It's unbelievable.

That is, it is incredible. And so in one world, you could say, well, it's a lot of sunk costs.

Right.

You buy a bike and man, you just feel a lot of regret for not using it. But having folks stay around for years is, is not just sunk costs.

Yeah, there are very few people who don't use it. There are people who within the first three months realize it's not for them. Right. But that's not just, that's peloton, but the, who stick through that first bit, they're using it.

Actually, let's pause there.

What is it three months? Is it one week?

Well, we look at like the journey, right? We're looking at the time, you know, we're looking at one day, one week, one month, 60, 90, et cetera. And essentially you see people who buy the bike as like an aspirational thing and it doesn't, it's a habit that doesn't stick. Like, that's just like, that's a reality of like aspirational product. And so, but a lot of times what we're doing is we're saying like, okay, what can we do to that person to kind of like crank them a little bit, have them try something different, have them try scenic, have them try a challenge, have, and try a program in order to be like, hey, maybe this is a more structured approach or a more like relaxing approach is better for you.

This is something I personally think a lot about is designing the first experience with an app because it basically sets the mental model for how app or product or in this case bike works. So have you figured out anything? It seems like trying to engage people after they've fallen is one thing. You think about other things that you figured out in the onboarding phase to kind of really crank it up so people are with you for a while.

Yeah, I mean, part of it is I think going back to this instructor relationship is finding someone you love and feel like you can like you want to show up for. And so making sure that these instructors have a presence, they have a personality we're putting in front of them. Whether it's onboarding emails or follow through emails or whatever it is. There's a lot we can do from entertainment and their social media presence and things like that. Which instructor can you fall in love with? So yeah, so I think that that's a big piece of this. Remember, if you get on the bike and you take Alex class or Jess King class, you're going to get the feeling that the platform is one thing versus if you take a Matt Wilpers who's more training focused or a Ben Aldiss, who's about feeling the beat and playing house music. And so a lot of it is about finding your match in a way.

Yeah. A little flirting.

Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a little bit. And be like, oh, and just making sure that folks do try. And what we do find is that people do settle into a habit. They basically find a type of workout, they find a length of workout, they find an instructor that they gravitate to. And then once. Then you're in that thing, a lot of it is then about like, okay, how do we extend you a little bit beyond? So if you like Alex, you may like this other person too, because I think having like two friends is. Is better than one, because, like, all of a sudden now, like, one day you're. You're not in the mood to get your ass kicked by Alex, and so you run off with Ali or whoever.

Now we're getting into a concept that behavioral scientists call explore and exploit. Here we're applying it to searching for your favorite exercise instructor. But try looking at it like you've moved to a new city and you want to try a bunch of restaurants before you decide which ones you like.

And plan to go back to.

The question then is always going to be, have you experienced, explored enough before you decide to exploit the ones you like. Are we exploiting too early? There's always a chance that if you'd explored a little bit longer, you'll have found a better restaurant or a better instructor. My hunch is that for Peloton, people don't explore enough. Given instructors are part of their secret sauce. It may serve Peloton and their users to push people to test out more instructors early on and then land on their ultimate phase.

So we're going to go through a quick, rapid fire. I don't know if it'll be too quick, but I'll shoot questions at you and you can shoot answers back at me, hopefully. Okay, so what have you guys done differently than other products or fitness experiences that has made you kind of the most highly engaged fitness platform that has existed, if that's correct.

Integrated hardware, software experience. Integrated hardware, software content. I think that's it. Because previous to Peloton, you had app based, like that was just like video or you went to the gym. And I think that like integrated experience, everything's there for you. Is what we did best after the.

Pandemic, how people change their habits.

Oh, yeah. Outdoors, more with friends, looking for deeper connection that is beyond a screen.

Does that mean lower kind of usage for you? Guys or how does that impact your engagement?

I think fun challenge for us to figure out how to make that deeper and bring that into the experience, but also respecting the fact that, guess what, it's okay for you to go have a beer with your friends tonight instead of meet Alex in your house.

Maybe we need a visual of Alex just looking really sad. This is just a quick aside.

I feel like we've been singling out poor Alex without explaining who he is. So Alex Toussaint is probably the toughest, most ass kicking peloton instructor that exists on the app. They're all fantastic, but it feels like you never want to let Alex down. Back to David.

What has surprised you about how people interact with the app or the bike.

Or the tread, how they interact with each other about it and the communities that have sprung up and the niche communities around Peloton scuba divers who? Peloton, my favorite.

Wow, that's great. Any learnings on motivating people at different levels of the fitness spectrum? So for folks who just are maybe in the start of their journey or for the folks who are high trainers.

And trying to climb mountains, offer something for everyone. But make sure you have opportunities to transition when you're ready to move up.

Got it. So meeting people where they're at, I'm doing these rapid.

I'm doing these like rapid, rapid, rapid fire so I can give a little more detail. So I meant giving people an in. That's not intimidating, whether it's low impact, beginner, ultra beginner, but making sure that they know how to proceed. You know, we have our instructors talking about it. Our software helps you do so to say, like, when is it time to explore that Tabata class that was scary before? Or take that FTP test, which is so scary until you get into it and realize this isn't that bad. I mean, it is bad, but it's not as bad as you thought it was.

Okay.

Two more information versus action. So in behavioral science, when we give people information either about calories in their food or how to save money, it doesn't actually equate to behavior change. So giving people information about their FICO score doesn't change their FICO score. And so how do you think about that in the context of Peloton, where we're giving people a lot of information about their rise or their work and somehow it's equated to some action. But how should we understand kind of this giving people information about their own performance and how does that relate to what they do tomorrow, the next day Et cetera.

I think that numbers on a screen are only going to go part of the way. I think it needs to be strengthened by a community around you or people around you who are also holding you accountable and then also relationship with an expert of something. In our case, it's one to many with instructors. But I think there are also interesting ways to. For Alex to recognize you for your hard work that are beyond just you getting a badge. Yeah. So I think it's got to come from a reputable source and it's got to be more than numbers on the screen.

This is another interesting notion. What he's saying is basically Peloton is using what behavioral scientists call the messenger effect to increase motivation. The messenger effect is the weight. We assign a piece of information based on how we feel about the source of that information. In this case, Alex is the messenger. And because we've come to trust him as an authority, we give greater weight to the feedback we get from him. Think of it this way. There's a behavioral science study that finds borrowers were more likely to make their loan payments on time if they got an email reminder from a loan officer they'd already interacted with. A candy mail signed by even the CEO of the company proved less effective. The messenger matters.

So for you, what is one tip that you would give somebody who wants.

To work out more?

You get to say one thing to this person. What do you tell them?

Make it so easy to do that you feel that it's ridiculous for you not to, like, make it break down every single barrier to working out. And I think that that's. Bring it home.

Nice.

That's it.

So basically just, yeah, the pandemic has.

Helped us all see your world, by.

Which we have brought you into our living rooms. And instead of getting dressed, walking to the gym, going to the gym, showering, going to work, we're basically waking up, rolling out of bed and getting it on. On our living room floor. Which sounds.

Yeah, great. That's, that's. That's the start. And then like that, that's. You have to. You start there and then everything else is. I think about how do you make that experience immersive and, and make yourself feel accountable through all the things that we talked about today, through software, through instructor relationships, through community relationships, through all that fun stuff. I would argue that working out at home at Peloton or any connected fitness product is actually a solve for that. We've all like, let's take us back to two years ago when we went to the gym but the idea of like walking into a Barry's and being like, I don't know what the heck is going on here, like, that's scary. Or even walking into just like a regular gym and like not knowing how to use that, that weight rack the right way and getting looks from the buff guy who's like, what are you doing, bro? So, like, I actually think bringing it home is like a solve for that in itself. And I do think, like, I would actually say that right now, Peloton is fairly close to anonymous. You can see people on the leaderboard, you can give them high fives, and I think again, you can turn up the leaderboard and all of a sudden everybody's gone. You still get high fives if you reached a milestone or whatever it is. So I actually think home fitness is a cure for that intimidation factor within fitness. It's a tight knit community that's hard to break into. And that's really where Peloton hit in a lot of ways. Was that, like, I didn't need to be in the best shape or know the most about spinning in order to feel a part of a community. And then all of a sudden I think that that's part of what we tapped into and why you saw all of these sub communities spring up around their sole love for Peloton is because we gave them the chance to be like, you're a part of this. Yeah.

I'll kind of preface this with this idea that in the beginning of films, feature films, one of the very first ones really was just filmed from one angle, one point of view. And in hindsight, you're like, why don't you move the camera? And over time, when we look back, it's obvious that we could do more. And so how will people look back at either this era of fitness and where do you think the future is going?

More credit and more detailed insights about everything you do. Not just how fast you run or how fast you ride, but how much you recover. Things in and outside of a workout, I think is kind of it. And giving that full 360 view in a way that's actually meaningful from a pure workout perspective. I think it's about finding ways to give credit and recognize your work regardless of the exercise or the type of workout that you're doing. Yeah. And then also future community presence, finding creative ways to bring in community. And I'm obviously bullish on things like AR VR type stuff when there is some miniaturization that happens since working out with an Oculus on your face. Is fun, but also, yeah, a little sweaty. Not the most comfortable.

Yeah.

Maybe more uncomfortable than working out with a mask or less. I don't know. But could be equal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also. But then I also think true interactive experiences are the future of fitness. And I believe when you merge that with content and these like, instructor relationships, you have something really, really special.

So that was David Packles of Peloton. There's so much to unpack from our conversation because I think Peloton has just done so many things right when it.

Comes to getting people to do something.

That has historically been very difficult. It's hard to think of a recent company that has come along and pulled all the right levers as often as they have. But it's what's next for Peloton that I think is key, and that's going to be creating an even greater sense of community among their users. Right now you can high five people. You can join monthly challenges with 1 million other Peloton users. You can see if others are working out at the same time. What would it look like to use the community even more to help you personally reach your workout goals? Right now, working out is still private. If I don't work out for two weeks, no one knows or is checking in and asking where you at. So there's an opportunity for Peloton to use the community to help you stay on track and reach your goals.

You never just not show up to meet a friend if you told them.

You'D meet them at 7am for a run. Could Peloton or the Peloton community be that friend? Peloton was so early into the space and has done so many things right, it's hard to imagine that they're not the company that would figure out social and community and make that happen. At this point, it's their race to lose. The Science of Change podcast is presented by Setsale. Act on the moments to lead to a sale. Visit them at Setsail co or on LinkedIn to learn more about the world's number one revenue execution platform. This podcast is produced by me, Kristin Berman and StudioPod Media. Our executive producer is Rachel Roberts and all episodes are written by Jack Ewer.