The Exchanges

Q you know, I just, I kind of want to do a kombucha shop. But then I just move on, and I keep doing my shows. Like, did you start to say to people, I, I'm really intrigued about, like, doing a cycling studio. They have these in LA, and I think, I kind of want to do one. Would, is that what happened? Did you start to talk to people?

A I did. I started to say it first to my husband, who told me I was insane. And then to my parents who told me that I had good health insurance, and then to a couple of friends who told me that, you know, they loved the gyms that they belonged to, and why would anybody ever do something like that? Um, but it was one of those things that just would not go away for me. It was one of those things, especially because exercise was such a daily ritual of mine, that every day I would wake up and try some sort of an exercise, leave feeling unfulfilled, and go back to thinking about this idea again. And remember, what made it one, ah, you know, one notch even more difficult was that I was talking about charging people to pay per class for this, whereas gyms already offered cycling classes. They were on the buffet. They were included in membership. There were plenty of them around.

AI assessment note: “I did. I started to say it first to my husband, who told me I was insane.”

Q Like a big chain lock, like that you would put around a motorcycle?

A We did. And unfortunately, the community board did not really like the rickshaw in the middle of the street. So we would get a ticket for 65 dollars a day for each day that the rickshaw was chained up to that parking meter. But what we, what we quickly did was we, we studied the traffic patterns outside because 65 dollars a day was actually a lot to us. You know, some of our classes had nobody in them and some of them had two people. That could be, you know, the whole price of the earnings of what we made on, on running a whole class. And so we learned that, you know, Saturdays it might make sense to put the rickshaw out there because there would be a lot of traffic walking by, foot traffic to and from Central Park. But maybe Wednesdays around lunchtime on the Upper West Side, not so busy, not worth the 65 dollar ticket. And so we, we would put out our marketing vehicle on days that we thought the returns would be good. And, uh, that was that.

AI assessment note: “We did. And unfortunately, the community board did not really like the rickshaw”

Q And, and did your husband, Julie, did he continue? Did he have a job at the time?

A It was actually perfect timing, because he had just gotten a new job. He had just figured out a way to switch careers. We had this 900 dollar a month apartment. Um, and I remember at the time, once we made the decision to start SoulCycle, uh, we cut up our credit cards, and on every Sunday night, Spencer would hand me an envelope with 200 dollars in cash, and he would say, here's your money for the week. And so, you know, I remember, you know, with my baby folding up the, the, the stroller and taking it on the Crosstown bus, and, you know, Starbucks wasn't really an option. I drank a lot of coffee at home, and All of those things, it's, it's amazing. It's, it's, it's amazing how quickly 200 dollars can go in New York City when you're walking down the street every day, but, but we did it. We really, we, we, we did it because it was something that we really had, well, I really had conviction of, and he's always been really supportive.

AI assessment note: “It was actually perfect timing, because he had just gotten a new job.”

Q But how did you guys manage that? When you're trying to run your SoulCycle studio in the Upper West Side, and you decide that next summer, summer of 2007, we're gonna open up in the Hamptons. Like, did both of you just like constantly go back and forth and back and forth?

A We did. We made a decision that, you know, Elizabeth would spend a little bit more time out and run the studio out in In Bridgehampton, and I was going to come back and forth. Uh, we were, we were actually talking today about how, um, our retail operation actually exploded that summer, and we had this, this older gentleman on the Upper West Side who basically printed, you know, let's say you had a friend's birthday party and you wanted to print 10 t-shirts that said, you know, happy birthday. That's the kind of printing he did, but somehow we made him our printer because our quantities were very small in the beginning. And then slowly but surely, people started to get fanatical about the SoulCycle clothing, and so we would design one collection a month, and I remember I would go to Harvey's office on East, on West 83rd Street. He had a cat that sat on his desk, and I would say, Harvey, you know, I know that I only needed 50, but now I need 250. Can you get them to me by, you know, Friday? And every couple of weeks I would go back, the quantities would increase, and I would load up my car on Friday nights and bring them out to the barn at Bridgehampton with all the new merch. And we would, we'd stay up late on Friday nights, and we'd set up the merchandise, and I would stay for the weekend. And then during the week, Elizabeth would run the Hampton Studio, and I would run New Yor…

AI assessment note: “We did. We made a decision that, you know, Elizabeth would spend a little bit more time out”

Q And Julie, what was the idea that just like open the doors and put some balloons out and hope people come in or, or did you, how did you get even get people to, to know that this was going to be there?

A So we did a few things. We, we made postcards and we went door to door. I remember pushing my baby carriage around the Upper West Side and sort of, you know, making friends with doormen, hoping that would let me in and put flyers and mail rooms and, and, Asking other business owners if it would be okay if I left some postcards near their counters. But then we had one other plan, which was when we were all done building the front desk, and we'd saved enough money so that we had enough of a run rate for a year. Elizabeth looked at me and said, okay, we have 2500 dollars left over. What do you want to do for marketing? And so we decided that we were going to make a t-shirt. At the time, people were just starting to come around to the concept of swag. And we printed this yellow camouflage t-shirt with the logo of the wheel on it. And I, and it said SoulCycle over it, and I remember taking the first t-shirt out of that batch, and I looked at Elizabeth, and I said, you know, one day it's not even gonna need to say SoulCycle, it's just gonna be like the Nike swoosh. People are just gonna know what it stands for.

AI assessment note: “We, we made postcards and we went door to door.”

Q So, Julie, did, I guess you kind of found yourself in, in kind of a similar situation, because you'd moved to New York from, from California, um, I guess in, in, in, what was going on in, in your life at the time when you guys met?

A Well, I, I really missed what I had had in Los Angeles in terms of an exercise community. Exercise for me, it was social. It was a huge part of the way that I connected with people. It was a big part of the way that I Spent my time bonding with my friends. We would go hiking. I can think about some of the most important moments that we had together, having really deep talks, going up a mountain, and then solving the problems coming down the other side of that mountain. And I got to New York, and all I could really find were, ah, gym classes and boot camps, where you were definitely gonna burn some calories, but not get much more out of it than that.

AI assessment note: “I really missed what I had had in Los Angeles in terms of an exercise community.”

Q Um, was that, was that hard, was that hard for, for the two of you when, when, when it happened? I mean, Julie, she was your friend. Um, was it, like, like, emotionally, was it difficult at all for that, that split?

A Yeah, I, look, I think it was, it was, it was very early on in the business. It was, we'd only, we'd only been open for, um, about a year, and, um, so it didn't, it didn't feel so dramatic as At the time, the business was, the business was very small, and also she, she stayed on for several years and continued to teach. You know, the really interesting thing is that, you know, after that happened, um, Elizabeth and I kind of decided that we were going to really invest in our partnership because we had, we had seen partnership not work out, and I think that we really felt like the success of SoulCycle was a real combination of the two of us, and so Elizabeth found us, um, a business therapist coach, um, and I remember she called me one morning. I didn't even know her that well. We'd been in business together for a little over a year, and she said, you know, I, I googled in the middle of the night last night, and I googled NYC Life Coach, and I found somebody that we're going to start seeing, and, uh.

AI assessment note: “so it didn't, it didn't feel so dramatic as At the time”

Q And Julie, when you, um, I mean, you were a talent agent at this time before, long before you meet Elizabeth, do you remember starting to think, I think I want to start a business?

A I definitely didn't think, oh, I want to start a business. But what I did think was, in Los Angeles, there was some boutique fitness that was starting to happen. In New York, nothing like that existed. And I had been, I had taken some indoor cycling classes in Los Angeles, and I had been, I really actually loved it, and I had found a community in a small studio there. And because I had been in a business where You know, I built businesses out of people. I kept thinking about how this could be different, and how could this could be marketed differently, and positioned differently, and what would make this unique, and it could be about empowerment rather than about putting pressure on yourself. And so it wasn't that I just had this need to start a business. I had a need for a very particular business. It was really more about a need for a product than it was, oh, I just want to be an entrepreneur.

AI assessment note: “I definitely didn't think, oh, I want to start a business.”

Q from this, like, fast-paced, like, really, you know, especially when you were co-CEOs, you had a staff, you had people around, you probably, every second of your day was scheduled, there was a team, there was energy, and then, like, one day you wake up and you're, like, having coffee in the kitchen, and you're like, okay, what am I gonna do today? Like, is it, was it like that?

A Well, we're busy still. I mean, you know, we tried to catch our breath a bit, and we actually, I remember saying to Elizabeth on the day that we made the decision to leave, I said, okay, but you have to make sure that we get an office together. So at least I know that we're going to have two computers and sticky notes, and we're going to have a place to meet in the morning. Like, I can do this as long as we know that somewhere there's an office where we have two desks that are side by side, and we did it. We took an office, and there was definitely something psychological about About sort of knowing that there was a place where, that we could touch base with, with each other every day. And I think, I think we're kind of just coming up for air right now. I think, you know, for the first time, it's like the two of us can look at each other and kind of, you know, it's like your eyes adjust to the light a little bit differently. We were just having a conversation this morning about how much the world has changed and, you know, what do you think the world needs now?

AI assessment note: “Well, we're busy still. I mean, you know, we tried to catch our breath”

Q As you may know, I ask this question of everyone who comes on the show, and I want to start with you, Julie. How much of, of what happened with SoulCycle do you think is because of your intelligence and your skill, and how much because you just got lucky?

A It's interesting, you know, in thinking about the next time around, now that you know so much, it turns out that, you know, the lesson that I would tell people is that ignorance is actually bliss, right? We made so many decisions, we made so many mistakes, but we just kept going because we didn't know any better. Now you know how to look at all those Excel spreadsheets, and P&L, and all that stuff, and you can make yourself crazy, but I think at the time, you know, what we didn't know helped us, and we just trusted our gut, and we went. And I don't think anything about it was lucky. I think the only lucky thing was that Elizabeth and I bumped into each other.

AI assessment note: “I don't think anything about it was lucky.”

Q Okay, let's just pause for a sec, because I want to break this down a little bit. Like, did you do formal partnership agreement? Did you do all that stuff? Or was this still pretty much handshake, like, you and me are partners, and we're just going to figure it out?

A So at lunch that day, the woman that introduced us, the, uh, Ruth, our, the fitness instructor, our third partner, and I were friends, and so we decided at the end of the lunch that we each brought a really particular skill set to the business, and she was going to be the fitness instructor, and she was going to help us to find other teachers, and help us to create the program, because neither of us had ever created anything in fitness before, and Elizabeth was going to work on all of our design, And all of our business and all of our technology, we were gonna work on the branding together, Elizabeth and I, since we had such a similar vision, and I was gonna work on the people. I was gonna do the PR, I was gonna train the studio staff, and so that's the way that we were gonna divide the business.

AI assessment note: “we decided at the end of the lunch that we each brought a really particular”