S10E3: Revolutionizing Wellness and Community with Julie Rice of SoulCycle and Peoplehood

I used to say, if we create users, that's not good enough. We need to create people that actually want to get the street cred for bringing their friend. I'm the person that told you about it, so it actually makes me cooler. That is what we're going for here, because that is really creating loyalists, evangelists, people that are going to stick with us for a long time. They're gonna do our marketing for us.

Welcome back to season 10 of The Room podcast. Claudia, can you believe it's been 10 seasons?

Madison truly cannot believe it will be 4 years of The Room with you this year. I'm thrilled to be back behind the mic with you for season 10. For all of our listeners since season 1, you truly have been with us for some formative years.

If you're new here, Claudia and I started The Room Podcast with the mission of opening the door to the room where it happens, in turn sharing the stories from some of the world's most iconic founders and funders, all in an effort to inspire and educate the next generation of entrepreneurs. And thanks to you all, we were recently listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 media list for 2024.

So why us? We're two best friends who met as product managers in 2018, then realized as we were making career transitions into myself, founder, and Madison Funder wanted to talk to the entrepreneurs that had built great companies. Since starting the podcast, I founded Pryve, a commerce payment startup, raised venture capital, and have faced a ton of challenges. Madison became a partner at Defy VC, was the first investor in my startup, and is now at Harvard Business School and is a pair VC scout coming to the table with the fresh funder perspective.

Over the course of 9 seasons, we've had over 88 guests amassing over $50 billion in enterprise value. Ranging from conversations with the former founder and CEO of Zillow, Spencer Raskoff, to Michelle Zatlin, the founder of Cloudflare, Grammy Award-winning artist Ciara, and the creator of Next.js and CEO of Vercel, Guillermo Rauch.

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Silicon Valley Bank, now a division of First Citizens, remains fully committed to serving founders, executives, and investors across the innovation ecosystem. As the largest banking team focused on technology, life sciences and healthcare, private equity and venture capital, SVB is uniquely positioned to deliver specialized lending and financial solutions clients need to reach their ambitious goals. Find out more at svb.com.

Perkins Coie is a leading full-service international law firm known for providing high-value strategic solutions for startups and investors. Lawyers in Perkins Coie's emerging companies and venture capital practice support the most innovative entrepreneurs and investors in fast-moving and high-growth sectors across the country. While addressing the myriad of legal needs that arise when fundraising and scaling their business. The firm's tailored legal services are informed by an understanding of each client's discrete needs. To learn more about Perkins Coie, visit perkinscoie.com. Welcome back to The Room Podcast. Today, we're thrilled to have Julie Rice, an entrepreneur who has not only transformed the fitness industry with SoulCycle, but is also pioneering new ways to foster human connection through her latest venture, Peoplehood. Julie's journey began with SoulCycle, a concept many of us may know well that radically changed the fitness world. If you've ever been to a class, you know that the experience is a lot more than just spinning. At her core, Julie and her co-founder team created a community that motivated and supported each other, transcending the traditional gym experience. Julie shares about how this idea of blending intense physical exercise with emotional and communal support became a cultural phenomenon, in turn capturing the hearts and spirits of countless individuals and launched the spin revolution. I myself am a big SoulCycle user. After navigating a successful exit to Equinox, Julie has gone on to most recently found Peoplehood. In an age where digital interactions often replace face-to-face conversations, Peoplehood aims to bring people back together through guided group conversations. Their core product is designed to enhance relationships, deepen understanding, and build communities in a meaningful way. Whether you're a fitness enthusiast, an aspiring entrepreneur, or someone who's passionate about building stronger human connection, this episode is packed with wisdom from Julie. Insights and themes include the importance of transparency in business operations and relationships. Finding partners that share your vision and values, and the future of community building. Let's open the door. Julie, thank you so much for joining us today here in The Room.

Thank you for having me. It's so nice to meet you both.

We're really excited to get to dive into your multi-founding journey of both Peoplehood and SoulCycle. But before we go there, we love to start at the beginning with our guests and we're curious, Where did you grow up and how did that shape your view of the world?

I grew up in a suburb outside of New York City in Westchester in a small town called Ardsley. And how did it shape my view of the world? I, I would say that I had access to New York City. I have always been, I always describe myself as a weird theater kid. My most formative experience I like to say was I got the lead in my first grade play. It's my crowning achievement. It was called A Walk with Mr. Peeps and I was actually Mr. It turned out later in life I'm not quite that talented. But the one thing that I will say is that I very early on formed a love of the theater. And I think my love of the theater is really very similar to my love of being an entrepreneur. It was really about creating something, about collaboration, about creativity, all working toward a common goal and really building something. And I think that being a part of productions and seeing a lot of theater in New York City as a kid It really oriented me toward that whole idea of collaboration and creativity.

Well, you have some fellow theater nerds here on the podcast. For those who don't know, our name is a nod to Hamilton, of course, and the idea of everyone wants to be in the room where it happens. And I myself went through a similar journey of doing theater growing up. And I felt as I've gotten older, really reaped those benefits of the collaboration you're mentioning, also the confidence that it helped to shape. And build who I am to go into spaces like becoming a founder. And so I guess building on that idea of early identity, we're curious, did you yourself think you would ever become an entrepreneur?

You know, I always like to say I, I never ever set out to be an entrepreneur. It was never something I, I wanna do. To be honest with you, even when I was an entrepreneur, it wasn't even what I thought I was really doing. I started out to continue our conversation about love of entertainment in the theater. I had a whole other career before I did this. I worked in the movie business.

NESP.

I was a commercial agent in New York, and then at a young age, I went to Los Angeles to try to become a Hollywood agent, which I did. The start to finish of that career was about 20 years, and I loved it. I loved working with talent. I loved working with actors. I love helping artists reach their potential. And so that was something that really was very formative for me as well.

I'm probably putting the handles before the bike here on some of the production value with SoulCycle and seeing that media-first exercise experience that you really helped to bring to life, which has just become such a, an industry now. Let's dive a little bit more into that first stage of your career where you were at Handprint Entertainment being a talent manager, as you alluded to. What was it like to break into the entertainment industry at that time?

I would say that being in the entertainment industry at that time was not dissimilar to being an entrepreneur. It was really all about grit, about work ethic, about making it happen. I feel like the thing that I learned about working in the entertainment business was that there is no no. You always figured out a way to make it happen. You kept trying, you kept trying. Everybody wanted those jobs. Everybody wanted to be assistants at those desks. And so you just figure it out. First person in, last person to leave. It was just a different time. I always like when people ask me questions about work-life balance because that is just not the way that I grew up at all. But I think that it was really interesting, and I think that also Something that was really interesting at the time was working as a manager in that particular time for a mentor like Benny Medina, who is, you know, of J.Lo fame, of Will Smith fame. He was a big executive in the movie business. And I think from Benny, I really learned about creating people as brands, really how you put together this idea of what is the brand of a person. I mean, when we think about Jennifer Lopez or certain celebrities, we really have a very specific vision of who they are both in and off of the screen. And this idea of creating a person having a music career, an acting career, products that they created, online businesses, and how you put those all together to articulate a brand. And I think when I was creating SoulCycle, I really thought about SoulCycle as a person. Who was she and what was her brand? And I think that as Elizabeth and I were growing the brand, we always did the litmus test in terms of brand voice. What did it look like? What did it feel like? What did it smell like? What did it stand for in the world? And I would really say that I learned that in Hollywood.

I'd love to tease apart SoulCycle, what she stands for a little bit more, but let's dive into that initial aha moment really where you met Elizabeth and started on this journey. I heard that you were introduced to Elizabeth by a fitness instructor over lunch in New York, and you two, by the end of the lunch, decided to open a stationary bike studio together. Tell us a little bit more about this pivotal lunch and some of the insights that led to this aha moment of really starting SoulCycle together.

Elizabeth and I are really entrepreneurs that create products that we ourselves want to use. So I don't think we ever look at the landscape and say, oh, there's a real hole in the market for that. Let's create that. We are the users of our products. And I can say that I had just moved back from Los Angeles, a place where exercise was the majority of my social life. I would go hiking with my friends. I would go along to a running club. When I wasn't working, I was pretty much exercising with friends. And when I came back to New York, there was just nothing that was exercise as lifestyle. There were big box gyms. You could go do boot camp, you could burn calories. It would be pretty unpleasant, but there was nothing that was at all representative of what I'd experienced in Los Angeles, which really, you know, the West Coast is light years ahead of us in the way that they think about wellness. I was taking classes at a gym. I was taking some spin classes with an instructor, and then we had become friendly. And I just kept saying to her, this could be different. This could be better. This could be a brand. This could be a production. This can be a real experience. People could come here for entertainment, for social life, for community as well as getting in their exercise. Because the truth is we only have a certain number hours in the day. Why should it be miserable? We just don't give ourselves that much time in the day. And one day she came to me, this teacher, and she said, there's a woman that's taking a class of mine at a different gym. And she keeps saying that she'd also like to create a fitness business and she'd like to put an investment into something. That was the day Elizabeth and I met for lunch. It was the Soho House in New York. I think the Soho House had just opened. And it was funny because we're so different. I do wish Elizabeth was on this podcast with me. That was poor planning. But I will say that Elizabeth and I are really two different people, which is what makes our partnership so amazing. And we sat down at this lunch and although we had really different skill sets and really different ideas, I think we had a very common vision. And by the end of the lunch, I went to get my cab, my cell phone rang, and she said, okay, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna research real estate and you're gonna research towels and I'll call you on Thursday. And sure enough, like Thursday she called me and she had found an old dance studio on Craigslist. It was a 5-year sublet. It happened to be across the street from the apartment that I was living in at the time. And I met her there and we spent 30 minutes looking at the studio and then we went across the street and we wrote our business model on the back of a napkin at Starbucks. And it said that if we could see 100 people in a day at $27 a bike, we would have enough money to rent our bikes, which is what you did, pay our rent, pay for a little bit of childcare, cuz we both had young children at the time and a little bit left over. And 5 months later we just opened. And it's why when I say I never planned on being an entrepreneur, I certainly didn't. I was still working in the entertainment business. My career was going just fine. And it was one of those things that I just said it out loud enough times and then the universe sort of brought me Elizabeth and The next thing I knew, we were open.

From lunch to first studio within 5 months. That's just such an incredible journey of momentum. Something I've noticed having been to SoulCycle from high school through now, there is a really consistent magic to every class. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you and Elizabeth created this new concept and institutionalized it with the first studio?

We can again trace it back to the theater background. You know, SoulCycle is experience designed. It's not just left up to what happens in the room, right? There's an actual arc and there's an actual script. And I used to say, people should feel like from the minute they cross through our doorway to the minute they leave, it's sort of a curtain up, curtain down type of thing. The front desk is trained to greet you in a really specific way. They're trained to know you in a certain way. I would say that the number one thing that we spent our money and our time and invested our love in at SoulCycle was really investing in people, investing in our employees, knowing each other so that they could get to know our customers. And I think that is the one thing that people really underestimate when they think about building community businesses, is that it takes a lot of time and a lot of love to really train people. It's the gift that keeps on giving for sure. But I do think that it's interesting because even as we think about creating digital businesses, The way that we train people is the way that our customers feel treated and whether that translates into a digital experience by the touchpoints that we put in product design or into an IRL experience. Those things are really important. And so, you know, the experience that you had in our lobby was really something that was designed and trained for. And then of course, once you entered the room, SoulCycle is designed— I always say I hate to take away the Oz behind the curtains, but it was really We designed it as the hero's journey. That's what the arc looks like. There are 5 stages of the ride. We warm you up. We pop the party. We break you down. We have a soulful moment. And then we send you home like a hero. And if everybody does it right, and if the musical, the physical, and the spiritual journey all align, which is the way that we train our instructors, there's 3 very specific training experiences that they go through, the musical, the spiritual, and the physical. And when you put them all together, If you follow that hero's journey, you pretty much can create that same magic in a very scalable way. That's 50% of it. Then the other 50% of it is what each and every special person inserts into that framework, right? So we used to say there was a real freedom within the framework. And when you put those two very magical things together, you can actually scale a very human experience, which was always something that people said could never be done. Well, you've done it in New York because you were able to touch it. You were able to manipulate it. But how are you gonna do it across the country? And I will say that a very pivotal moment for the business, for Elizabeth and I, was we had been in business, we had 8 or 9 studios in New York, and we went to open our first studio in Los Angeles. And before the Los Angeles studio in West Hollywood, we literally could visit all of our studios in a day. I could go and make sure that I liked the way that the new bras were hanging on the rack. I could take an instructor's class in Connecticut, make sure that I liked the opening inspiration they were delivering. I mean, I could touch it all in one day. But when we opened West Hollywood, we went and we trained and we sent some of our New York people to do the training. And a year later, we went back and we rode in the studio. And we just kept thinking, like, is this going to be able to translate cross-country without us being here every day? And I remember on the 1-year anniversary of our West Hollywood studio, we went into the lobby after we did the class and people started to pull us aside. And they would say to us the exact same thing that we had heard in the lobbies in New York, which is like, I came here to lose some weight, but that's not what really happened for me. Along the way, I became confident enough to make a career change, or I wasn't getting along with my teenage daughter and she needed some exercise, so I brought her here, but this has completely transformed our relationship together. And slowly we began to understand that we had been able to bring that human experience to someplace that we could not touch by good training, by creating real systems, and also by experience designing something that could be replicated.

It's pretty clear that people is such a core part of the product market that you found. And thank you for touching on the framework that led to scalability here. Within just a few years, you ended up selling millions of rides and expanding to countless studios so early on into their journey. Could you tell us, when did you feel that you had first reached product market fit?

We are so focused as founders now on marketing and scale. Because with all this pressure, especially with social media and all of the digital products that we're looking at these days, I think it is so hard for us because we are constantly thinking about numbers that are millions and millions. You know, I always have loved the marketing model that's 1,000 true fans because I always think there's a really great pivotal marketing article called 1,000 True Fans. And the premise of the article is just if you can get 1,000 people who don't just like your product, but actually are evangelists, they're crazy about your product, then you know you have product market fit and you've created something that can ultimately begin to scale itself. But I think as a founder, and I will tell you this time around, when I started SoulCycle, there was no social media, there was no Instagram. And so my litmus test for product market fit, to answer your question directly, was I will never forget the day that I closed the studio door And there were 35 people on every one of those bikes. And I actually had to turn 3 or 4 people away because people came and just showed up. Nobody was used to the class being sold out. So people used to walk in all the time. And it was the first time I was standing there in the lobby with 5 or 6 people that weren't able to actually ride those bikes. And I thought, wow, this is wild. I mean, at the time, I certainly wouldn't have known it was product market fit. I didn't know words like that. I didn't know words like exit or scale or chart. Those things were not actually in my vocabulary at the time, but in retrospect, In retrospect, I can actually tell you that having 39 people for 35 bikes felt like product market fit. And so today it's really very interesting as a second-time founder, just really trying to keep my head down and remember that if one person leaves and wants to bring a friend back, that's product market fit. I think that we look at numbers now and they're so wild, the numbers that we're looking at, and it's very hard to remember. That it's real people that want to tell their friends about things that are product-market fit.

I was actually gonna bring that up because as we're talking, I'm just thinking of when I went to my first SoulCycle class, which is a little bit late in the game just 'cause I didn't have access to it growing up in Seattle. But when I was in New York, I remember the friend who took me and I was just thinking of her right in this moment of like that Sunday morning that we went together. And then I brought my brother for his first SoulCycle class and that word of mouth growth that is so authentic because it's people having a good time and loving their experience and wanting it around. I was just curious if you could speak a little bit more to that wildfire go-to-market that you had with the bringing a friend.

I think especially now there's so much noise in the world and there's so much choice and we have so much accessibility to so many things. You really have to create a product that is not just good. but that's good enough that like your friend that brought you on a Sunday morning, I used to say, if we create users, that's not good enough. We need to create people that actually wanna get the street cred for bringing their friend. I'm the person that told you about it, so it actually makes me cooler, right? That is what we're going for here because that is really creating loyalists, evangelists, people that are gonna stick with us for a long time. They're gonna do our marketing for us. And I do think that it's really important to have those people at this point. Acquisition costs digitally are so high and it's such a game of churn and burn for so many brands at this point that I really do think that we have to really look ourselves in the eyes and say, do we not only have a product here that's good enough, that's a utility, but is it so good that I wanna tell someone else about it? Because for me, that's a real test.

What you're mentioning around people being at the core and really having this moment where you felt product market fit as opposed to this complicated equation that an investor might put together is really core to the story. And I think we're going to touch on that a little bit more with Peoplehood. But just to close the SoulCycle arc a little bit more before we dive into what you're up to now, you mentioned acquisition or exit as being a key word that you didn't really know early on in the journey. In 2011, Equinox acquired a majority stake in SoulCycle. And I know that especially in this current economic environment, a lot of founders are starting to consider what does it actually mean to get acquired or to sell or to chart an exit strategy? Could you tell us a little bit about the decision and what advice you might have for other founders who are considering or actively navigating through a sale?

I can tell you that For Elizabeth and I, the acquisition was never an exit strategy. We were two female founders that found ourselves as entrepreneurs. I mean, we were two people that had this idea to create someplace that we wanted to go. And pretty quickly we had this little rocket ship on our hands and we were running behind this train trying to keep up with it. And the one thing that I will say is that we were both very ambitious and we understood what we had, and we also really loved SoulCycle and we truly believed and still believe that what we were putting into the world was making people happier, was making people healthier, and was really changing the way that people felt about their relationships with their bodies and their relationships with moving their bodies. And for us, our strategic deal with Equinox, I will tell you at the time, was really about winning. I don't know that we ever really saw it as an exit. I like to tell young female founders, that you will always in the beginning, even if you're doing it so well, which we were, we were crushing it. And yet we still thought everyone knew how to do it the real way. When you're a first-time founder, maybe especially when you're a woman, you, you think like, oh, I'm working as hard as I can and we're doing a great job, but there's somebody out there that really knows how to do this. And so I will definitely say that part of it was Equinox was best in class at what they did. And we wanted to win. We wanted to scale quickly and we wanted to run. We had 8 really successful studios. We could see other people coming into the category that we had created, and truth be told, we deserved to win. We had a brand that punched above its weight. The SoulCycle brand has always been bigger than the actual business, and we worked very hard to create that. And so we just felt like we wanted to make sure that we could build a business that was as big as the brand that we had built. And so we definitely felt like taking a strategic investment was the way to go. We felt like somebody could help us to consolidate so that there were competencies that we were sharing, that we could get help with some real estate, that we could get help with some operations, that we could begin to move more quickly. And so for us, it really, at the time, although we certainly made some money, it was definitely not about how do we get rid of this business because we stayed and ran it for another 9 years. And to be honest with you, we ran it pretty independently for a long time. For the majority of time that Elizabeth and I were there, We really led that business. And so it's interesting when you talk about exit because it's a strange thing to think about an exit very early on. I can honestly say that now that I know about exit, sometimes I'll find myself wondering, what is the end result for this business? And although I do think there needs to be consciousness around that, because of course we're living in a very different economic time, even from a year ago. A year ago we were going into rooms and pitching for funding and people were still interested in it. Now we're all of a sudden, I was joking around the other night, I was at a dinner and I was saying, this is the first time I've heard people using the word profitability in a room because for the longest time it was really just about raising and raising. And now all of a sudden people really care about making money, which is something that Elizabeth and I have always cared. But I do think that it's a very slippery slope. I will tell you as a founder and as a creative, what I will say is businesses and ideas are like children. You have to give them the room to find their own fit and where they want to grow. And when you start to engineer them in directions that are solely for exits or strategic investment or whatever, I'm not quite sure about product-market fit. And so I think it's a slippery slope. I think you have to think about both. I don't think you can be naive. I think you have to understand that ultimately you need to be capitalized and funded and people wanna make money and buy houses and have futures, and that's all great. But I do think that you have to also give the business a minute to breathe and to grow in the directions that your consumers are telling you they want this product to be in. As a founder, it's very hard to not get caught up in it. I often find that like, I'll go into work on a Monday with fresh ideas and a lot of creativity, and by Friday I'll just be thinking like, oh my God, how am I gonna keep this thing going forever? And then I'll need to almost pull myself back on a Saturday or Sunday with no noise. To really reflect on what direction this thing should be iterating in or where the product wants to be going. And I, I would just say that for founders out there, especially for founders that are also founder slash CEO, I think that they're really two different hats that you have to wear. I think there's one hat of being the person who is being the creative and developing the product and coming up with the ideas and iterating and trusting your gut and moving things forward. Then I think there's a second half to you where as a CEO, which is managing the budget and figuring out how you're gonna keep your company alive. And sometimes I think you really need to toggle back and forth, but allow yourself that moment to be a founder and a creative and really ask yourself the questions that lean into your intuition.

Yeah. Seeing the forest from the trees. We'd love to dive a little bit more into your second founding journey, which is Peoplehood. And that path really started with your relationship with Elizabeth during the SoulCycle days. You've spoken about how Soul was scaling. You and Elizabeth started collaborating with a business coach, Meredith, to develop tools to communicate more effectively. Tell us about how this moment really planted the seeds for what is now Peoplehood.

Elizabeth and I, very early on, we found ourself with this business that was becoming a runaway train. I think that we had both envisioned having a nice small business. And it having a minute or two to grow. And we quickly realized that this was something that was moving quickly and we had a lot of decisions to make and there were a lot more hours and a lot more work that needed to be done. And Elizabeth, she'll tell you herself, had a panic attack about it. And she Googled life coach NYC, and that's how we found Meredith. And she said to me, uh, we're going to see a coach tomorrow. And I thought, there's no way I can go see a coach tomorrow. I'm the only person that works behind the front desk. But we went and we saw Meredith and very early on we began working on the way that we communicated with each other, the way that we made decisions, the way that we addressed each other's wants and needs for what the business was gonna be doing. And the time that we spent learning how to hear each other, how to absorb the fact that we wanted a lot of the same things, but we weren't the same person, that decisions that we were making, whether financially or with our time, looked different for each of us. So Meredith's really taught us how to hear each other, how to put ourselves in each other's shoes. And I would say that we took a lot of the tools that we were learning in our sessions with Meredith, and we began to teach them to the rest of the organization. And it was perfect because as we were learning to grow as partners, we were also becoming leaders of what was a small company to what was ultimately about 2,500 employees. And so we began to use these leadership skills to communicate with each other and then to communicate with our employees. And then we taught our employees how to communicate with each other the same way that we were learning to. And as a result of it, we became a real culture of communication and transparency. And we also began to scale that culture program within our four walls, which became the recipe for the way that our employees learned to communicate with our customers. Like we always say, happy employees, happy customers. It is very hard for the insides of a company to be unhappy and then have a thriving business externally. They usually match. We began to really understand through all of the work that we were doing is that these skills are not skills that we are necessarily born with. We are not born knowing how to talk to each other, and nobody teaches us that in school. We are not born knowing how to listen to each other. Nobody teaches us that in school. Communication is something that— it's funny because we just take for granted the fact that all of the things that we spend so much time learning in school, all of the time we spend understanding that we need to run 4 times a week if we wanna keep our bodies in shape, we need to lift weights on a repetitive basis. If we wanna take care of our mental health, we can't go and see a therapist once. It's something we have to do on a recurring basis. And yet somehow we assume that we'll become parents and our instincts will just kick in. We'll get our first job and we'll just know how to navigate politics of office life. We'll get married and our partner will just know what we want, which is wild because our relationships are actually the number one predictor of both our physical and our mental health. And yet for some reason, up until this point, we really have not thought at all about what does this category of social or relational health look like. How do we learn those skills? How do we practice those skills? And what do our lives look like when we are actually competent at those skills? How much richer are our lives? And so I think that Elizabeth and I also really understood this at SoulCycle. We would see people go into the dark rooms on these bikes. They would hear inspirational words. The adrenaline would be kicking in. They would be releasing the endorphins. The instructor would be telling them they could be more than they wanna be. Pedaling quickly in the dark. And those breakthrough moments, they thought, uh, I could be more than I thought I could be. They had aha realizations about their own behaviors or relationships. They wanted to communicate things to other people, and yet they would come out into the daylight and there were no spaces and no structures for people to have those conversations. And so as we began to think about what was next, we began to really think about both what we created in our internal culture. And what we saw happening to people at SoulCycle and, and what was the next iteration of that? How could we help people begin to articulate their thoughts in this way, connect with each other verbally rather than just in rooms in the dark? And so that's how we started to think about peoplehood. What does it look like to create something that we're calling relational fitness?

Incredibly struck by this image of what you learned through the experience of SoulCycle and now where you're applying it today with Peoplehood. And I think what you're touching on is really just a marriage of community, brand, and wellness and how that has helped to fuel personal individual growth and then collective growth for the communities that are able to inhabit in these spaces. And it sounds like this is really gonna be a part of the business behind Peoplehood, which was implicitly a part of the business behind fitness studios, which is what SoulCycle was. Ostensibly on the surface. And I guess driving your listeners into the world of Peoplehood, could you share a little bit more about what awaits them for the Peoplehood experience? I know you guys launched just this year and just walking us through the journey of some of those insights that you're taking and bringing into this new business and this new experience.

It's category creation. And when you talk about being a second-time founder, I'm taking myself back to a world where people used to call the front desk of SoulCycle and say, I don't get it. It's included in my gym membership. Why would I come there and do this with you? And so I think that creating this concept of relational social fitness is also a very new idea. To walk you through it, we do it digitally. Of course, we do it in our first studio, which is on 17th Street. But let's just say that people enter the screen. We've created our own digital platform and there's some music. There's a fabulous guide who is gonna take you through the experience. We start with a little bit of breathwork. We've done a lot of studying of how to take people out of their daily stress mode, out of fight or flight. Flight and get them into a space where they actually can take in what somebody else is saying rather than still being in their own busy mind. And then we go into some group sharing. We start with very low-lift prompts and questions so that people don't feel intimidated. It's actually a lot of fun to hear what other people are thinking and talking about. And slowly but surely, we get into questions that are a bit deeper. We break into some one-on-one sessions as well, where we have the, an opportunity to learn what we call higher listening, which is listening without interrupting, without adding your own opinion, without adding your own advice, without adding your own judgment. It's just being there to hear what somebody else has to say and letting them peel the layers of their own onion so that they can actually have their own aha moment. And a couple of things happen when we're in these peoplehood sessions. First of all, we have a lot of self-realization. Which allows us to go back out into the world having processed our own thoughts and engage back in our relationships and show up a little bit differently. And we also continue to practice a few core skills like active listening, like the way that we show up. We learn how to play it back, which is what we call one of our skills, which is when you're just repeating back to somebody what they're saying so that they can hear their own thoughts out loud. And mostly what we're teaching people to do is to take a pause before they respond, to give somebody else the space to process their own thoughts and to give yourself the time to process what somebody is saying. Because most of the time we are simply reacting. We are not really responding. And when I think about what Elizabeth and I learned to do the most with our coach, Elizabeth and I never ever solved the problem that we came to solve in the first meeting. We go into the meeting, we're both convinced that we're right. We come in with such steadfast points of view about the way that we think the decision should be. And I come in and get everything off of my chest that I've been bottling in for 3 weeks. And then she says her point of view, and it's really just a ping pong match. And then after we've listened to each other, we go home and then we have another meeting. Where we inevitably come back having had time to process the other person's point of view. And I will tell you, in the 20 years that we've been business partners, I cannot really think of more than one or two times where we haven't radically flipped opinions by the time that we've come back the next day. Because you get over your ego, you get out of your little insular thought pattern, and you can really take in somebody's point of view. And it's fascinating. I will actually say to you that I think one of the most one of the most successful things that we did in our business collaboration was learn how to take in each other's point of view, as well as the point of view of our teams. And we're doing a lot of this work now with teams. We have a Peoplehood at Work program, and we're doing a lot of this work with corporate teams now, because the truth is, especially now that we've gotten into digital and hybrid and remote workforces, there's a real issue because people don't know each other. They have no patience to hear other people's ideas or thoughts. And how are we gonna collaborate? How are we going to move innovation and ideation and productivity forward if we are unable to operate as a collective of ideas and without empathy, without listening, without understanding? It's interesting, people consider these such soft skills, but the irony is that they are really the only skills. If you can't hear a coworker, If you can't listen to what somebody else is bringing, then there will never be teamwork and there will never be productivity. And so it's been very interesting to work with work teams on this. We've been doing a lot of work with couples. Couplehood is fascinating. Coming in and just giving your partner a chance to talk. We all get into these crazy patterns in our marriages, in our partnerships, where we're basically just having the same Groundhog Day conversation over and over again about fill in the blank what the topic is. Breaking these communication patterns is really hard, and that's why it takes practice. To break a communication pattern is, is a real thing to do.

Just like the problem statement that you're laying out, I think is incredibly resonant just with Claudia and myself as we think about our generation of people who maybe, whether it be because of the pandemic, pushed them back, or just there is a great rhetoric around self-discovery and understanding who you are at your core and how that can inform your relationships. I just think we're really in a moment in time where people are seeking this. I'm curious for your guys' go-to-market strategy for Peoplehood and how you think about your target customer. You're talking about a couple different avenues and business model approaches, but as you think about the landscape of the intersection between self-help and identity, from religion to therapy to community gatherings, like how do you envision Peoplehood sitting within that landscape that spans spiritual to tactical.

I think that's one of the greatest things about Peoplehood. We spend time studying all of the things that you just mentioned. We've spent time with rabbis and priests and with AA leaders and with scientists and with self-help gurus and with therapists. And looking across the landscape of all of those things, we really did try to create a product that takes greatest hits from all of them and puts them together. That's a really interesting point that you make because the, the truth is the number one thing that we're all competing with in people's lives today is their time. And so the question is, how in one hour can we give you a little bit of spirituality so that you feel like you're a part of something bigger than yourself? How can we create a little bit of community so that people don't feel quite so lonely? How can we give you something tactical so that as you go out into the world, you can actually move the needle in your relationships? And then how can we also take this piece of self-awareness, these breakthroughs that we do have? I mean, we like to say we're not therapists, we don't do therapy. That's not what we do. We love therapy, don't get me wrong. But I do think there is a self-actualization that happens in the room that also allows you to know yourself better and take that with you as well. And so I think that's the great thing about peoplehood, that it, it brings pieces of all of those things. And the truth is, I also think there is something about recognizing yourself and others, about not doing this work in an echo chamber. We start out in these rooms and you look around and you may or may not think that anybody in there is gonna have something in common with you. And we're not even through the first group share and it's impossible to bite your tongue and not say, oh my gosh, me too. That's all you wanna say to people is that same thing is happening for me. And so it's been interesting. Doing it with strangers is really liberating, and you can say a lot of things into a really safe space that you might not be able to say in other places. Doing it with a partner is incredible because you are actually growing together in these sessions. You leave these sessions and you can feel a shift in your relationship. The same thing happens when we're working through things with teams. It's a different way to work through challenges together. You can actually make progress in a really interesting and inspiring way. And so there's a lot of different use cases for it. And I think it's an incorporation of all of those things, actually.

I think the, the incredible thing with self-discovery and communication and just being more centered and growing is it's— the work's never done. And so as we look towards 2024, what can users, future customers expect, and what's in store for Peoplehood?

We've only been open for about 8 months, and so we are, we're continuing to grow our offerings. We're continuing to explore ways to expand the product. I think that in 2024, you can really expect to see us working with a lot more companies. I definitely think that we've been seeing some great progress in terms of the work we're doing with teams. We're beginning to really focus on a couple of specific cohorts. What we've seen a lot also is that people really like to come and be with the same people week after week. We're experimenting with— people can now join a cohort where we meet for 8 or 12 weeks and we begin to get to know each other differently so that we can explore the work even a little bit more deeply. And I think that people are really beginning to understand that this is something that is such a necessary part of life, of growth. It's like money in the bank or compounding interest, right? The more time you spend working on your relationships, the better they become, the richer they become, the more fulfilled you feel in your life. And I, I really do think that with repetition and with consistency, I, I do think people are going to feel much more connected to themselves and to other people.

As a founder who's juggling a million different things and probably doesn't have the best work-life balance, everything that you're saying is incredibly resonant, and I am pumped to look at just overall wellness, including mental wellness going into next year. So thank you for starting Peoplehood and really bringing more attention to this core part of everyone's life. As we look towards next year, we chatted a little bit around what folks can expect for Peoplehood in 2024, but Julie, what's next for you personally?

Huh. Great question. I can imagine that I'll be spending a lot more time at Peoplehood. I think as a startup founder, I feel like that's what's— that has always what's next, but I can honestly say I really am a people person. Back to this mission of creating things that I really believe in. As I've gotten older, I've always been a people person. People have always been the most important thing to me. I am super lucky. I have a husband that I'm still totally obsessed with and, and love spending time with, and I have some great kids, but I also really have a few great communities that I'm part of. I have a, a mom group that we call our squad, and I love spending time with those ladies, and I have other wonderful friends. And I think that for me, what's next personally is I'm also really focused on making sure that I'm spending real quality time and growing those relationships. You guys are super young, but I will say that as you get older and you begin to, to really understand that life is not forever, I do think I have become much more focused. My own form of self-care. Is really making sure that I am spending real time with the people that I love. For me, that is the something that really does feed me. And I can say that is what is next for me.

I absolutely love that reminder, especially as we come into the holidays here at the time of recording, just thinking about who you could spend time with and who you can send that extra bit of love to near and far. Before we close out with our hero question, which Claudia is gonna ask, I just have a silly frivolous question to ask you. As the founder of SoulCycle, we're curious, what is your favorite workout music? What SoulCycle class that you see on the schedule do you go, okay, I have to hit that ride?

Oh, it's funny. Well, first of all, I always say like, I'll never tell what my favorite SoulCycle ride is. For the time that I ran SoulCycle, I had 300 amazing children that all taught incredible classes and they were all my favorite. I will also say that as my teenage daughters like to remind me, I have terrible taste in music. And so I am— I am definitely like the poppiest pop culture person. Just as a guilty pleasure in general, just to know about me, I am a total like Kardashian, Bieber, Swiftie type of gal. Like that's where my free time leads me. And so I would say that you could take me to any Taylor Swift ride, that's for sure. I would say pop is generally where I head, except you can also find me at a good Florence and the Machine, Maggie Rogers, Fleetwood Mac moment. Those are also very much my vibe. So I would say somewhere in between very light music and, and very deep women. I, that's where I tend to go.

I think I went to a Bieber-Selena ride one time. This is back when that was like peak drama and it changed me. So I love these mashups for sure.

Julie, as we come up on the time for today's recording, we'd love to ask our hero question. We ask everyone this question on the podcast. And that is, who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

I would have to say that it's Elizabeth. I will tell you that one of the proudest achievements of both my personal and business legacy will always be having had the same partner for 20 years now. And the one thing that I can say is that as a woman, it is very challenging to find mentors. And champions and people that can give you real-time advice. And I will say that having Elizabeth has been the gift and the thrill of my journey. She has always known what to do in the times that I haven't. She has supported every crazy idea that nobody else would think was a sane thing to do. And we've really learned so much from each other, both through the best and the worst of times. When you go through that many things with people and you see them at their very most stressed out, as well as the times that are profitable and glorious, you really get to know someone. And I, I can say that Elizabeth has really helped me grow not only as a leader, but a human being. And so she has absolutely been the, the person that has been the biggest influence on so many parts of my life.

Thank you for sharing that. And I think you and Elizabeth really present such a great North Star for other female co-founding pairs as, you know, what the relationship can look like over many decades. And I know with Madison, we're only a few years in, but certainly see a lot of what you mentioned about Elizabeth and her. So thank you for sharing that.

And let me just say, and this is the last thing I'll say, it's not easy. You know, there are times when one person wants to sell and one person doesn't, and there are times when one person wants to grow and one person wants to shrink. But I think like any relationship, and I also say this about my marriage as well, I think there becomes a very conscious moment in a relationship where you understand that something could take two paths. Where you look at something in a hard moment and you say like, this is either gonna end or I'm going to commit right now to the fact this is gonna be a lot of work. That this is gonna be something that is sometimes fantastic, and then sometimes we really have to struggle through it, and you make a choice. That's really what it is. And I think that when you find somebody that really feels like a soulmate, whether it's in business or life, I think that choice is really worth it.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Julie, for being on the podcast and the time today. This was a, a blast. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you guys so much.

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