I recently interviewed Julie Rice on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is the co-founder of a business that reshaped the world of fitness. Julie Rice is the co-founder of SoulCycle. Julie, thank you for joining us.

Julie: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

Adam: You grew up in New York and you did your undergrad at Binghamton before moving to L.A. to work in the entertainment business. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What were the key experiences and lessons that helped shape the trajectory of your success?

Julie: Well, it's interesting. I always like to point to my first screenplay as being a real milestone for me. I was talented enough to snag the lead role as a seven-year-old in A Walk with Mr. Peeps. And I was Mr. Peeps. And I always say that's where I got the bug for the theater, which became a real passion of mine. I would say that theater has been a real influence in my life. I love to study characters. I think it really revolves around my love for people. I'm a real people person and people's nuances and isms. And the things that make them different and special have always been really fascinating to me. I love to study characters. Early on getting involved in theater for me after that first-grade play, I went on to take theater classes and participate in community theater. I even wound up being a theater minor in college. I think the things that I learned are really about people observing and creating characters and also about collaboration. I would say that creating a theater production or creating a show is a lot like creating a business. There's set design, there's branding, there's character creation, there's interaction and being a part of a company that creates something like that, that created productions really went on to inform the way I would think about business.

Adam: And, I think, an important lesson. There are a lot of lessons there. One lesson which we could spend the entire podcast talking about is the love of people and how that relates to being a great leader, being a great entrepreneur. But I wanted to hone in on a different one, which is your theater background and how that has been elemental to your success as a leader, success as an entrepreneur. We often think about going to business school, studying business, whether it's as an undergrad or getting an MBA, as being critical to being successful in the world of business. But something that I know you believe in, something that I believe in very strongly is, that's not the case at all. You can come from any background. And sometimes it's having the exact opposite background, doing something that allows you to develop a completely different set of skills will help you even more than studying business.

Julie: Absolutely. So obviously, my love of theater wound up leading me into the entertainment business where I became an agent for actors and then ultimately a manager. And coming up in the entertainment business and Hollywood is a really hard business. It is a competitive business that everybody wants to be in. And nobody is giving you a map or helping you along the way. You walk in on your first day at any agency and it's definitely a figure it out mentality. And I will say that when somebody assigns you to a desk in the entertainment business you don't get to ask a lot of questions. You don't get to say no. You just figure out a way to make it happen. And, I think, my years of working in the business, going from being an assistant to being an agent to being a manager and having to figure it out along the way, was probably my most valuable training as an entrepreneur. We had no idea when we started SoulCycle. We were two women who had a really great idea that we were passionate about. Neither of us had never ever taught a fitness class. We certainly are not star athletes. We had never started a business. We had never looked at what an app could look like. But at the end of the day, what we did have was we had a passion, we had a vision, and we knew we needed to just figure it out. And people often asked me, “Did you ever think SoulCycle would be so successful? Did you ever imagine getting this big?”. Or conversely, they'll say, “Did you ever have a fear of the business failing?”. And I always say, “Absolutely not”. I never had a vision that it would be this big. But I also never had a vision of it failing because the one thing I knew was that when I went to work in the morning, I had to make it happen. There was no day that I was going to go home without getting the 75 people that we needed to get on Viaccess studio that day. And so, I think, that figure it out, make it happen attitude is, in many ways, more valuable than a lot of the academic things that we learned in school.

Adam: And one of the things they don't teach you in school is how to pivot. Because when you're in school, you're focused on learning in the classroom, which is extremely important. You're focused on landing your first job, which is extremely important. But what happens after your first job? What happens when you decide to walk away from your first job? And in your case, you had an extremely successful career working as a talent manager. You spent two decades working as a top talent manager. And then you decided to pivot. You have this idea for SoulCycle, which we're going to dive into later on in the podcast. But before we do, I want to know if you could share with listeners what your best advice is, on when and how to pivot in your career?

Julie: I always say what makes a great entrepreneur is not the idea. It's not even the ability to execute, it's the ability to take a risk. There's no doubt about it. I had a really successful career. In fact, I was just getting to the place where you could see what the trajectory of that career would look like. And I'll never forget walking my parents through our first SoulCycle studio, which we found on Craigslist. And it was in the rear lobby of a building on West 72nd Street. It was 1500 feet, we had no showers, we had to build changing rooms and a bathroom. And most of it was built from plywood. And my dad looked at me and he said, “You're gonna give up your health insurance and go do this?”. And I thought, doesn't that really sum it up. But the main thing is the ability to take that risk. That is the thing, the jumping off, the saying, I am going to leave this successful career and go do something else. And there are only a few ways to do it. Great businesses don't start a side hobby. They really do demand all of your energy and attention. I think putting two feet in is very important. For me, what was able to push me over the edge is that I have a fabulous business partner. And I always say that Elizabeth is a great risk-taker. And I'm a very hard worker. But I will say that that is true. My business partner is just very brave, she's really able to take a lot of great risks. But I also do think that there is something about having a partner, the right partner, when you can look at somebody else and say, okay, we're gonna do this together, I got you, you got me. The two of us have very different skill sets. And so, a lot of those times when we talk about pivoting, we would make mistakes. I'll never forget, we started SoulCycle for $250,000. And we used 50 of those $1,000 to soundproof our first studio. We met a guy who said that he had soundproof studios, porn studios, in Midtown. And so, he definitely could soundproof our little spin studio. Of course, he stuffed some stuffing in the ceiling, and then went and played the stereo and the neighbors came out hysterical and said that it didn't work at all. And I was just about ready to die. I thought, oh my gosh, we've spent a significant portion of all of our capital soundproofing the studio that doesn't work. And Elizabeth said to me, “You've got to think of these things as tuition”. We never went to business school. This is just us getting our MBA. And we would pivot and we would figure it out. We would figure out how we were going to either re-soundproof the studio, or how I was going to let the cops come. The sound had to be at nine o'clock at night when there was a fake class going on. It was just, you had to figure it all out. So, that's what we did. And I do think that ability to pivot, that ability to know that your business isn't working one way so you've got to try it another way the next day. I think that's really paramount.

Adam: I love the emphasis on the figure it out mentality, which you mentioned a number of times. Now, you mentioned it, initially, as you were talking about your success as a talent manager, your success coming up in the entertainment industry, and clearly essential to your success as an entrepreneur. And I can tell you, in my own experience as an entrepreneur, you have to figure things out. There's no one who's going to tell you this is how you do it. You don't have a boss who's going to tell you this is how things are done. And in turn, when you're thinking about who to surround yourself with, when you're thinking about how to fill your team, who to hire, that's the first thing you look for. You're looking for people who have that figure it out mentality. Who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. Who aren't afraid to go in there. And they may not have the answers. They may not know how to get the answers. But one way or another they're gonna figure out how to get them.

Julie: That's correct. I often say I really never remember what people's resumes look like or what colleges they went to or all the things that they told me that they could do when we sat in our interviews. The times that I really remember people being their best workers and their best selves and the people that I continue to hire over and over again, are the people that in that moment where you thought the thing that you needed to be delivered, couldn't make it to the studio on time, or the project that you needed to execute to change the website by 10 hours couldn't happen, figured out how to help make that happen. Those are the things that people that can figure it out and pivot and be agile, and not get too stuck in what the plan was, what the plan needs to be. Now, those are really the people, especially in a new business. It's interesting, different people and different types of employees are great for different phases of your business. In the beginning, you really need people that can just go wider, not deeper with skill sets. Who are jack of all trades and are willing to make anything and everything happen. And then, of course, as the business gets more complex, and you begin to reach scale, and you build a bigger team, we begin to look for people whose skill sets are deeper, who are more experts in different areas of what they do. But I do think in that very beginning stage, finding those people that are willing to really do anything, stay up all night, figure it out, that's ultimately what makes the business start.

Adam: And on the flip side, I actually just yesterday was having this conversation with a former intern of mine who's trying to figure out what to do as he graduates from school. And I said to him that as you're looking at different opportunities, you want to consider a couple of different things. You want to consider the experience you're going to get, what you're going to learn from the work you do, and weigh that against the brand of the company that you're going to work for. How prestigious is it? How much is going to help you in terms of how others are going to perceive your worth and your ability? And when you're working for an early-stage company, when you're working for a startup, you're gonna learn a ton. You're gonna get thrown into the fire. You're gonna do everything and it's going to be an incredible learning experience. When you take a job working for a huge company right out of college, which is what I did, the amount of learning you're going to do is going to be much more limited because you're going to be in a much more siloed role. They don't need you to do as much as someone who is starting a new business is going to need you for. So looking at it the other way. That's something to consider.

Julie: Oh, definitely. In those big companies, once the org charts look fancy and have lots of lines reporting into lots of lines, I would say the intern or the first guy out of college does a lot of coffee. Getting into a startup, you're seemingly sitting next to the CEO or the founder some days and really digging in because it's all hands on deck. And so, I agree with you. There's pros and cons of each. And I always think it's great to mix both. And there's a lot to learn at both. But I do think it really depends on the type of person and the type of experience that they're looking for. 

Adam: How did the idea of SoulCycle come together? And what were the keys to actualizing the idea? 

Julie: So, I had just moved back to New York from Los Angeles where I was working in the movie business. And when I got back to New York, I was really looking for a great exercise experience. As you know, living in Los Angeles, exercise and movement is just a huge part of your social life and your lifestyle. For me, I'm not much of a nightlife person. So, most of my social life revolved around these morning hikes that I would go for with my friends where we'd spend hours talking and catching up. Or I ran in Santa Monica with a running group every Saturday and I had this great group of friends that didn't work in my business. And so, when I got back to New York, I really couldn't find anything that mirrored that incredible kind of social experience, lifestyle experience, time that I gave to myself. There were just big box gyms where you could go, you could burn calories, somebody would yell at you about doing better than the person next to you. You could cross it off your to-do list and you could move on. And I just kept thinking this should be joyful. This could be different. This could actually be sort of a mini experience. What would it feel like? It's a little bit of a production. And so, I became friendly with a teacher at a gym that I was working out at. And one day she came up to me after class and she said, “There's a woman that takes my class at a different gym. And you should meet her because she's talking about wanting to also invest or do something in the fitness space”. And so, I met Elizabeth Cutler for lunch on a weekday in January of 2006. And we're just the most different people which, like you said, it really makes for great partners if you can surround yourself with somebody who has different skill sets than you do. And we're very different, but we had a very common vision. And she had just moved from Colorado and was finding the exact same thing in New York that she really missed those outings and she really missed hiking and she really missed her friends. And so, we had this lunch and we had this great idea. And we said this could be branded, this could be different. This could be a paid for class. At the time, New York only had gyms where you paid a membership fee. Which was great because you took somebody's credit card and you had no real responsibility to deliver anything. In fact, it would be better if they didn't come because you could sign up more members. But we thought, what if we had a pay-per-class model? What if we challenged ourselves every single time to produce, kind of, this curtain up curtain down experience each time you walked through the door and then left. And we left lunch that day sort of buzzing, and I got into my cab and my cell phone rang, and she said, “Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna look for real estate and you're gonna research bikes and towels and I'll call you on Thursday”. And sure enough, she called me on Thursday, and she had found this old damn studio on Craigslist. It was a five-year sublet in the rear lobby of a building on 72nd Street. And I met her there. And five months later, we opened SoulCycle. And it was one of those when you talk about just figuring it out. We spent five months just figuring it out. Turns out, you rent towels if you don't have laundry machines. We built our front desk from Ikea. It took us three trips through the Lincoln Tunnel to get all the kitchen cabinetry that we needed in Elizabeth’s Audi station wagon. But we figured it out. And because we had so little money, and so little resources, we had a pretty quick timeline that we needed to make it happen. And that's what we did.

Adam: Anyone who looks at SoulCycle and thinks, wow, this thing is such a huge success. And it's hard to understand what went into it. There is no such thing as an overnight success. It's every day, day in and day out grinding, taking the small steps, doing the hard work, doing what's necessary. But I do want to ask you, looking back, what were the most important things that you and your team did that led to SoulCycle becoming such a phenomenon? What were the key moments that led to this incredible success?

Julie: Well, I will say that if I had to distill it down into one thing that made SoulCycle what it was, it was really the way that we treated people. Elizabeth and I both love people; we are people people. And we learned pretty early on that people just want to matter. They want to feel like they're important to your business. They want to feel like they're important to each other. Employees want to feel like they matter. They want to feel like they're important to the business, like they matter, that they're important to you. And, I think, that we spent the most amount of time and the most amount of money making sure that we treated people that worked for us well. And training those people to treat our customers well. Very early on, we started training our employees to learn to communicate with each other differently and to communicate with our customers differently. And I would say that making sure that people felt important to our business was our real key to success. On top of that, I think that we created something that has never really been done before. I mean, you have to picture 2006 in New York. Let me paint the landscape for you what the fitness and lifestyle scene looked like, there was none. There was no Lululemon. In fact, the Lulus, as we'd like to call them, had a third-floor showroom down the block from us. There were no Lululemon stores. Nobody was walking around New York in black tights. There was just nothing like it. So, we really helped create fitness as a lifestyle. It was really more than just SoulCycle. It was really about category-creating, which was tricky. We needed to tell people why they would even pay for something before we could even tell them that our product was going to be the best product in the category.

Adam: How do you do that? 

Julie: Yeah, really, really, really great question. Look, I think a lot of it had to do with brand. A lot of it was in terms of marketing and hand-to-hand combat. We really became a part of the neighborhood that our first SoulCycle was in. We got to know the neighborhood. We got to know people in the neighborhood. We got to know people that kids went to school in the neighborhood. Businesses that were in that neighborhood. Really, it's interesting. We had no sign on our studio. Which is unbelievable to think about in New York because in New York, it's like you can have a pretty mediocre business and as long as you have a big sign up and you're getting some foot traffic because of the density of the city, it's pretty hard to fail. We were in the rear lobby, we didn't realize when we signed our lease that we wouldn't be getting signage. So, I'll never forget it, people just couldn't find us. It wasn't like anybody was walking in off the street saying, hey, I saw you're trying. What is this place? And so, Elizabeth saw a rickshaw on eBay and we spray painted the rickshaw yellow and silver. And we put a big sign on the back of it that said, “SoulCycle this way” with a big arrow. And I would go out in the morning and I would learn the traffic patterns. Because when we put the rickshaw on the street and chained to a parking meter, we would get a $65 ticket for having it out there. And at the time, 65 bucks really mattered. And so, I would try to figure out, is it worth it to put it out there on Wednesdays? Or would it be better on Saturday morning when people are going into Central Park? But we really, we had to get clever in terms of trying to figure out just how to mobilize this neighborhood to get them into SoulCycle. And so, look, we did a lot of different things. But I think the most important thing that we did was we really delivered on our promise. It was so hard to get people to try SoulCycle that we could not afford for them to not come back. If you found me behind the front desk of SoulCycle in the rear lobby on West 72nd street, I would feed your parking meter or watch your dog, let your kids sit in the lobby. If you hated the class, I would let you tell me why for 15 minutes and then I'd give you a free pass to come back. We had to really love people into staying and coming back. And that's exactly what we did. I mean, it was really high in the beginning. But eventually what happened was our users didn't just become regulars, they became evangelists. And that's a central essential, especially when you're trying to build a business that's about community. For us, our community really was the product. People came for fitness, but what they really stand for was each other. And to get buy for something like that, people really need to feel like they matter in that community.

Adam: To grow and scale your business you have to turn your customers into brand ambassadors. They have to genuinely love what you're doing, they have to love your product, they have to love your service. They have to love you. You can't force people to market for you, they're gonna have to do it organically. And in the case of SoulCycle, it feels like magic. But you're able to deliver something that people loved. You love people, and people love what you're delivering. And that formula led to this massive success.

Julie: Yeah, that's right. What we designed in the room, the experience leading up to the ride was, of course, we ran a whole hospitality school at SoulCycle. And our chief culture officer trained everyone. We had SoulCycle university that ran in the basement of our corporate offices.  Where everybody that came to work at SoulCycle first spent two weeks at the front desk and then we went through an entire hospitality training program. But once you got into the room, I mean, we designed an experience that really took you on an emotional journey, as well as a physical journey, as well as a musical journey. And when all those pieces work together, people are really transported. And they were taken to a place where they were really able to connect with themselves differently. It was very empowering, very joyful, very cathartic. And, I think that because we had a pay-per-class model, we challenged ourselves to deliver that experience every time and as a result of that, we were really fulfilling our promise because nobody had to come back. I mean, he needed to buy a new ticket every time he came. And so for us, the challenge to deliver on that was high stakes. And so, we really had to do that.

Adam: Five years after launching SoulCycle, you sold the majority stake of the company to Equinox, and four years later, you sold the rest of your equity to Equinox. You then took a very senior position at WeWork, which has transcended the news and is now in pop culture. And you were there amid a time of great chaos and tumble. And I would imagine listeners would be very interested in knowing what the best lessons you learned or from your time at work.

Julie: Well, let me say that we work with chaotic and crazy and everything that all of the documentaries and TV series are portraying. There's no doubt about it. It all really happened and it was quite a thing to be a part of. I will say that after we sold our remaining stake in SoulCycle, and I'm sure that you hear this from a lot of founders, there was a real hole for me in my life. And I would assume like most entrepreneurs, I thrive in chaos, I thrive in collaboration, I thrive in creativity. Yeah, and so for me, WeWork was a great place to go because it wasn't mine. The stakes weren't so high for me. The emotion was not so attached. And yet, I'm a passionate person. And I tried to do everything with integrity. And so, I really loved being a part of that company. It's as you can also imagine, sort of, a once-in-a-generation thing to be a part of a rocket ship like that. At the time that it was heading for the moon was pretty fascinating. I think I learned a lot about global scale when we were at SoulCycle. And we had not yet scaled internationally. So for me, I always say it was, sort of, like getting peripheral vision. Understanding how to build something that would function and serve other parts of the world, rather than just this country, was very interesting. For me, I met a lot of really smart people. I still work with some of them. And my new business, which was fantastic, I would say, Adam, really assembled a fabulous team of people that came from really interesting places. And I also learned a lot about being a leader and the kind of leader that I want to be and what that means. It's pretty hard when you're leading your own company to reflect on that. It's interesting being inside of somebody else's company and seeing what all that looks like.

Adam: You made reference to your newest business, Peoplehood. And it's a business that's focused on nurturing relationships and deepening connections. Throughout this conversation, we've been talking about the love of people as essential to being successful in life, being successful as a leader, and being successful as an entrepreneur. Your first career was in the business of managing people and people relationships, people skills, being able to connect with all kinds of people, critical to being able to excel in just about every business. What advice do you have for anyone listening on how to successfully cultivate winning relationships?

Julie: Yeah, well, it's interesting because the project that we're working on now, which is called Peoplehood, is really about that. We're really trying to teach people how to cultivate successful relationships. It's so interesting that as a society, you can see that we're pretty broken. I mean, most of the headlines these days are about the loneliness epidemic. You can see that our country is in conflict over just about everything. And finally, the good news is that mental health is really coming into the forefront of the things that we're thinking about these days. But yet, we're not really talking a lot yet about social health. We're talking a lot about how we take care of ourselves but not how we take care of each other. And yet, all of the research will really show you that the way that we are feeling in our lives at the end of our lives, the number one thing that affects the quality of the life that we each lead, is the people that we love and the people that love us. And how are we taking care of these relationships? We spend all of this time at the gym, we spend all of this time in academia. And yet, we somehow don't think that being in relationships takes some sort of skill or practice. And so, in Peoplehood, what we've created is a 60-minute guided group conversation experience. I always say it's like a SoulCycle and church and AAA had a baby. And there's great music and there's breathwork. And what we do is we really learn how to listen to each other. And that's really the key. And that's really been my takeaway. We've spent so much time working on this project and studying with everybody from professors and data scientists to priests and rabbis and AAA leaders and authors and psychiatrists and psychologists. And my takeaway from all of it, both in terms of my life experience and the studying that we've been doing, is people just really need to learn how to listen to each other differently. How can we hold space for each other? How is it okay to just hear you and provide a space for you to talk without me giving you my advice or my opinion or judging you? Because it's like we started out saying in this conversation, people want to matter. People want to feel heard. People want to feel held. And it's incredible. One thing I learned as a leader, people would come into my office and they would be so heated and they would have so much to say or so much that they were disgruntled about. And I would be thinking to myself, does this person need a raise and a promotion? If you just give someone 10 minutes to talk and sort of unwind what they've gotten themselves into and just really show that you care, that sounds a whole lot of it. Just people feeling heard or appreciated. And so, that's what we're trying to teach people how to do. How to hear each other differently and how to give each other that space and it's been really powerful. It's been a really interesting journey so far.

Adam: Listening is critical to being successful in anything you do. You're about to challenge Joe DiMaggio in terms of his history. I don't know how many episodes in a row now where I've said, “Great leaders are great listeners”.

Julie: Take that sentence and fill in anything. Great parents are great listeners, great spouses are great listeners, great siblings are great listeners, great teachers are great listeners. There's really not anything in our lives or any role that we play, where listening does not really help you be great at being a part of that relationship.

Adam: Julie, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Julie: It's a great question. I think that there are a couple of things. And I like to tell entrepreneurs this. First of all, if you have a passion and it's something that's keeping you up at night, when it's definitely something to pursue, entrepreneurship is hard. There's more no’s than yes’s. I always say it's really got to be SoulCycle. I couldn't have not created SoulCycle when I went to sleep at night. It woke me up in the middle of the night. I mean, there was no pad by the side of my bed and this thing had to be born. It was just part of who I was. And so, I think, you need that kind of conviction, that kind of crazy to want to do something like that. But I do think that when you have a dream, underestimating how much work it's going to take is also why people think that it's going to be easy. A dream plus a lot of really hard work is what makes it happen. And with both of those things, you need the passion and you need the work ethic and when you put them together, that's how things happen.

Adam: Julie, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being part of Thirty Minute Mentors. 

Julie: Thanks for having me.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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