Evelyn Webster - Test, Fail, Repeat: SoulCycle's Practical Approach to AI Implementation

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Traditional media is dying on the vine. Podcasts are rising quickly to fill the void. Do not miss the boat. That's podcastcollective.io. All right, we are live. Evelyn Webster, welcome to the future of fitness. It's great to have you. We were just having an amazing conversation, one of those ones where I'm always like, I don't know. Why wasn't I recording? The topics we have here are so valuable for I think executives and operators within our industry. And, you know, I uh everyone knows Soul Cycle by now in our industry, of course. Like it's it's iconic, right? It it grew, it defined a category. You guys are still, you know, out there doing the work, you know, changing with the ever-growing demands of the consumer, which we're going to talk about. And the the topics that we've isolated today are something that I talk about frequently in this podcast, you know, and oftentimes, you know, during meetings or in the hallways of events, uh, which is, you know, how is the fitness consumer changing? Everyone wants to know, right? There's a lot of different things from the generational changes of the younger, you know, and the the push for health, right? And the focus on wellness and where they're spending their money and how they're spending their money, um, how they're making those decisions. So I know you guys have put a lot of time and research into that. So that's going to be a great topic. And then how is Soul Cycle itself adapting? You know, how do you take an iconic legacy brand, continue to push it forward and adapt as these changes come forth? And then, of course, we can't get out of a conversation nowadays, even without talking about artificial intelligence. It's too prevalent. Everyone's trying to figure it out. I think people will be curious, you know, how you guys are applying it. A lot of operators out there feel the pressure to adopt artificial intelligence into their businesses. They're just not sure where to start, right? Like what's the right thing for them to do? I mean, you can use it for anything, right? Ooh, there's a lot to cover. Um, Eagle, if you don't mind, just give us a quick introduction into yourself and then we'll we'll tap right into those.

Cool. Thank you. And uh, and I'm super excited to get into those topics. You're right, and could be here all day. But so I joined Soul Cycle in December of 2020. So the timing of me joining Soul, I naively thought we were at the end of the pandemic and very quickly realized, oh my goodness, we're at the beginning of it. And so we it was a very interesting 12-month induction into this industry. And Soul Cycle was my first boré into the wellness category. So I have spent 30 plus years in the media and entertainment business working on some extraordinarily amazing brands like Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune, In Style, Essence. Um I I worked in lifestyle media, sports media for a very long time. And then in 2016, I joined a global news platform called The Guardian. You may detect from my accent that I am British. The Guardian is also a British-born, thank you. I love yours, a British-born but now global news platform. And 2016 was a really interesting time in America to get into the news category because we just had an election. And so I decided that was a very interesting time for me to really narrow my media focus and get into specifically into news, which I did in for four years. And then in 2020, of course, SoulCycle, a brand that I had long, long, long admired and had been a member of a very active member of the Sol community. I saw that they were looking for a CEO. And whilst many people during my interview process told me that I was not actually qualified for the job, I managed to persuade them that I totally was. And that's when I joined Sol in December of 2020.

Yeah, interesting time. We don't have to we don't have to relive those times. Um that's not what today's podcast is about. And yeah, yeah, we're we're pushing forward now. Um, and I I think it was uh was it a connected health and fitness that I saw you speak first? Was that right? I saw you somewhere on stage like two or three years ago. Very impressed. Yeah, very impressed with with the the contributions that you made there. So let's talk about the fitness consumer, even like what have you guys noticed? Like over the past few years, uh, the pandemic definitely changed people's approach to fitness and wellness, you know, where and ultimately it's like, well, where they put their time and money. That's what really dictates. People can say a lot of things, right? But if they're actually putting their money and their time into something that that's meaningful. So what have you guys noticed in the research and you know, the the yeah, the perspectives that you guys have? How is the Venice consumer changing? And maybe you can give it specifically to Soul Cycle, like how is a SoulCycle client and consumer changing?

Yeah, yeah, well, I was gonna say unfortunately, but I don't think it's unfortunate or not. I think the changes in the consumer startup before the pandemic, by the way. I I my observation from all the research that I had access to when I got to Seoul and then the research that we get to do done, the changing behaviors started prior to the pandemic, but there's no doubt that the pandemic really accelerated them. And look, I I've talked about this a lot, and I think we all know this. The definition of fitness or the definition of wellness is much broader today than what it was historically. And so for us, what's interesting is I remember when I first started SoulCycle, people would say, Oh, you must be really worried about Peloton. And it's like interesting. I think I admire Peloton, I think it's a tremendous brand. Actually, they are one of hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of competitors. You know, the coal plum studio down the street is also a competitor of SoulCycle because consumers are thinking about wellness in much in a much broader sense. I think that that is a very fortunate move. I'm happy with that because it's better for the consumer to have a really well-balanced perspective of and understanding of what wellness means for them. It's like your mental health, emotional health, as well as your physical fitness. So, so we've definitely seen that shift accelerate through the pandemic, but it started before. Most recently, or more recently, what we are seeing in the industry and SoulCycle is also wrestling with consumers who not only want variety, but they want value. So this kind of real shift towards that variety and value is something that we are contending with because 19 years ago when SoulCycle was founded, and certainly for the first decade of our life, we had what we call ride and die. They just rode at SoulCycle as Ali did, right? Before I joined the company, I was coming to SoulCycle five, six times a week. It was my primary pursuit. Now I'm riding at SoulCycle, but I'm also investing in strength and yoga and other forms of wellness. And so, you know, all of us are getting a somewhat smaller slice of their wallet. However, it's a much, much bigger category. So it's the volume of new customers that we're bringing into our business, just understanding that actually they're not going to be committed to one wellness offering, but rather multiple wellness offering offerings, as they should be. But that's a different business model for us. And it's certainly not the business model that we built the business on for the first 10 years of our lives.

So I like the slice on the wall analogy. If if maybe if wellness and fitness is taking a larger chunk overall, but that slice is cut up in different pieces, where is it coming from? Like, you know, there's a lot of research, you know, for especially in the younger generations, people are spending less money on alcohol, right? They're spending less money maybe on dining out. Where do you think our increase, it has to come from somewhere? It's a limited pool of funds for most people, right? So where, yeah, where who's losing right now?

Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think people are buying less stuff and investing more in experiences. And certainly that's what we have found in all of our research that we do, both amongst our existing consumer, but also amongst our prospective consumer. We call them holistic wellness seekers, by the way. So if you hear me talk about holistic wellness seekers, that's how we define the audience of consumers that we are very specifically targeting. And what we have found is that they're buying less stuff. They might be drinking less, they might be eating out less, but they're buying less stuff, right? Because they're spending, they're deciding to prioritize experiences. This is particularly true of younger consumers. And so where is that money coming from? Well, it's coming from them just re-prioritizing what is more important to me. What's more important is my mental, physical, and emotional health and well-being. And how do I address that? Well, I address that through creating amazing memories and experiences. And wellness fitness falls into that category. So it is a, as we all know, a big valuable and growing category. And I think people are just buying less stuff in order to prioritize their broader wellness journey, which is great.

It is great. And uh neither of us are psychologists, at least I I'm not. I don't think you have a psychology degree, right? I no. What do you think is the psychology of the shift? Like, is it that? I mean, my theory is that a lot of, especially my age, so I'm, you know, in my upper 40s now, and my my mom is in her 80s, and I'm starting to see what it's like very not starting, I've been seeing it for decades, because my father passed away in 2019, of like what how you need to take care of yourself and what those latter percentage of your years can look like, whether or not you took care of yourself or you did it. So to me, that's a huge influence on my generation, is like, okay, well, we got to start taking care of ourselves, right? Because those last 10 to 20 years can get pretty nasty if if you're not if you're not focusing on wellness. But in the younger generations, I'm curious, like, what do you think, you know, people in their 20s or early 30s, like, what is driving this push towards wellness and experiential spending and things like that? It's it's great. I envy it. I wish I did it earlier. But I'm I'm wondering if you put any thought into that.

Yeah, do you know it's interesting? It's a really great question. And I also I haven't put a huge amount of thought into it very recently, but I used to do a lot of work in this space to understand the psychology of consumers and the the motivations of consumers, particularly younger consumers. And if you just look at the world around you, and if you think about what younger generations have lived through, then I mean, this is why it's very interesting for me coming from like most recently in media working in the news category. It is chaos out there in the world. And that is what our younger generations are living through. It is more chaotic, more divisive, that more divided politically, economically than ever before out there in the world. And so that I believe from work that I've previously done in media, that one of the big motivations is seeking to escape the chaos of the world, understanding the fragility of the world around us, and deciding to live our best and happiest life. I think that is a huge driver and motivator of younger generations kind of candidly looking at the absolute shit show that's going on outside and saying, actually, I got to carve out my own peace or happiness of joy. And that comes through experiences and it comes from investing in yourself and in the community. And you know, we talk at SoulCycle. Somebody asked me the other day, you know, what business are you in? I said, I'm in the business of making you happy. That is a sanctuary. This is what our riders tell us. They say it is my safe space, my happy place. And we work really, really hard in service or protecting that sound. And I think that is being driven by consumers who seek to escape the chaos of the world around them. I think that's true for SoulCycle, but I think it's a huge motivator of these generations that are observing more divisiveness in the world around them and seeking to escape it and create their own reality which is happier, healthier, and more joyful, candidly. So I I, you know, I don't know that for a fact. We I haven't done that research very recently, but that's that's certainly the echoes of the research that I did when I worked in Mew to Entertainment. I think it is more true today than perhaps it was even then.

Yeah. Well, I I think that resonates. I really do. And I I'm curious, I may actually do some research on this later today in the time gap I have, because now I'm generally curious about what's driving it from a psychology standpoint. But I think it's spot on. So, you know, you look at these shifts in fitness consumers and wellness consumers, Evelyn, and as a leader of a company like SoulCycle, you know, how do you adapt your brand, your services, your offerings? And, you know, uh, as you were talking, as we were talking earlier, like what are the levers you can pull as a leader to adapt and change?

Oh, we've got so many. It's interesting. We we've got an abundance of levers. I think the biggest challenge is understanding which ones you want to pull first. So one of the pieces of work that I did when I first arrived at Seoul was this really uh to understand the brand in it. So what's interesting when you are such an incredible brand, we had amazing foundation founders with this incredible vision for what Soul Cycle was. And obviously we scaled as a business very, very, very quickly. What I found when we got there is we haven't really codified the brand. And if you asked 20 people, both internally and externally, you know, what is SoulCycle, they'd all say slightly different things. And so we invested quite heavily in a piece of work so that we understood what it what are the unique characteristics of SoulCycle. What is it that we do so uniquely that that give us our own competitive advantage? And the reason that I did that piece of work was because we were beginning to look at what are our growth, what's the growth plan, what's our vision for the next 10 years. And we needed to understand how far can we push this brand. And what I learned from that work, which was really fascinating, is that Soul Cycle is not tethered to the cycle, it's tethered to the soul. And what does that mean? I mean, Julie and Elizabeth, they named us very intentionally, right? So we are a we are, yes, an incredible workout, the workout you get from the cycle, but we are way more than that. We are a source of joy, happiness, escape from the chaos of the world outside. And that's the soul of soul cycle. And so what we have found in terms of what are the levers for us to grow and to build the business and expand the business is leaning into the soul of SoulCycle. And so we've been doing lots of work around what does it mean for us to get off the bike? What does it mean for us to lean more into wellness? And you know, you mentioned the wellness weekend that we've been running for the last couple of years. The wellness weekend is really an opportunity for SoulCycle to curate wellness experiences that complement what we do on the bike. And we've been running it for a couple of years very successful, successfully, but we've also moved into running, for example, as a category. So I was a big runner. So I was a marathon runner, a triathlete. That is what got me into SoulCycle because I wanted to continue to do a high-intensity workout, but I couldn't run. But it is now my ACL's been fixed, right? So I'm back to running. So spinning and running are really great cross-training. And so we've moved into the running category in terms of how we are able to access other running communities and introduce them to SoulCycle. So leaving in standing that the brand can lean into the soul and that we're not tethered by the cycle, it really unleashed an abundance of opportunity for how we might look at growing and expanding our business and the brand offering. And I would say that the other really big lever is our talent, right? So Soul Cycle is Soul Cycle. We have a very specific class style and uh arc. You know, there's very clear arc to the class and the experience that we take you through. But we have 300 instructors, and those 300 instructors teach a class which has their own personal accent, their own personal imprint on the soul experience. And so what's interesting for us as we continue to grow our business and recruit new talent is that we are casting, we're very clear on the talent that we cast for, bringing in different kinds of talent into the soul experience actually enables us to expand the soul offering. And so we're very intentional around casting. We have lots of archetypes that we think about when we are thinking about the instructors that we are bringing into our business. So I think there's two really huge levers there. One, this crystallization that the brand is tethered to the soul, not the cycle, gives you permission to get off the bike and do quite interesting things, particularly in a category that is rapidly evolving and expanding. But also continuing to invest in the phenomenal talent that we have, both on the bike, with the instructors and the archetypes that we have when we think about our talent, but also our studio crews. From the moment you step into Soul Cycle, the experience that you have through the welcome that you receive is very much the thing that contributes to its being your safe space, your happy place. And so we continue to invest in talent, and that naturally is ever evolving and developing. And that's all also a huge area of focus for us. So that they're kind of the two big levers that we that we pull. There are many more, but they're they're the two main ones that we think about when we're thinking about developing an evolving soul cycle going forward.

The my approach to fitness has traditionally been a very trying to think of the right word here, masculine in approach. And I don't mean that in any way, like I'm I was always great programming, you know, sets reps and schemes, and you know, do the work, get the rest. Like it was always by the numbers, and it was it was like that. In recent years, I've realized as I start to ask more people like you questions about the value of brand, right? And what that means exactly. And it's always been kind of like this far-off thing, like brand, whatever, right? Oh, and then I started realizing, really start to notice how brands have affected me personally in my life and how loyal I am to brands and how certain things make me feel, right? So basically I'm getting in touch with my feelings, is what I'm trying to admit to you here, Eva. It's like, you know, like it brand is is a very uh it's art and science, right? And when you think of the term brand, how would you define it to someone? So yeah, like if I if I'm asking you right now, how do you define brand? What does that mean to you?

That's a really, really interesting question. I I grew I started my career in brand marketing, right? I believe vehemently in the power, resilience of brands. What does it mean? A brand fulfills both a functional and emotional need, and a product fulfills a functional need.

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The brand strength of having a both a very practical and functional relationship with your consumer, but much more importantly than that, fulfilling an emotional need with that consumer is the thing that makes brands resilient. And so for me, when I think about what is a brand, it's how does the brand make you feel? Yes, of course, the product offering has to be really robust, it has to be brilliant, and it has to continue to evolve and develop. That is that's table. Strong product. The experience that you have in our studios, in the studio and clipped in on the bike, that 45 or 60 minute, that's the product and it has to be phenomenal, and it is, but it's the feeling that you are left with. And that is why we invest as heavily as we do in casting for incredible talent. We do not accept anybody to come and teach a class at SoulCycle or work in one of our studios because it's the feeling that you are left with that makes SoulCycle strong. So when I say to you we are a sanctuary, we are the happy place, the safe space, they're not my words. I'm not telling you that that's what SoulCycle is. That's what our community tells us we are. That is the strength of a brand. That is a feeling. And so for me, when I think about brands, it's yes, of course, we provide a phenomenal workout without question, but we are more than that. We are a feeling. We make you feel happy, safe, joyful. Where else will you would you go to a nightclub at six o'clock in the morning and dance like a crazy person? That's what you do at SoulCycle. Why do you do it at Soul Cycle? Because we make you feel joyful. And that is the power of a brand. It's the feeling as well as the function.

Yeah, well said. Well said. And one of the ways I know to leverage a strong brand is retail. And I know there was a recent article that I read about you guys that you're really making a big push into retail. You want to really make at a larger percentage of the total revenues. And so to talk about that move. What are you guys doing there? What's the strategy and tactics behind that?

So, you know, our retail business has always been a reasonably quite I I was surprised when I got to SoulCycle at how big that chunk of our business was, which is great. And essentially what we have done historically, I I often describe it as merchandise. And it's interesting because you know, sometimes I say that I work in fitness, sometimes I say I work in wellness, sometimes I say I work in the entertainment business. Collector SoulCycle can feel like you're going to a concert. And so our approach to retail historically has been a little bit like, oh, I've been to the concert and now I'm going to buy the t-shirt. It's been quite a merchandising process. And that has worked very, very, very successfully. And all credit to the teams of people that have driven that. But that's why retail has been a reasonably chunky size part of our business. All we're doing now candidly is we're pouring petrol on the on the fire because our retail business has been growing very, very, very, very rapidly. And so we have expanded outside of a carol. So introducing new categories, nutrition, hydration, other consumable products. So the strategy around our retail business, and the reason we think it could be a bigger proportion, is one, we're just enjoying phenomenal growth right now. We're doing some really incredible collaborations in our in the retail space, which candidly sometimes we do for grand marketing reasons, but of course also help up to build our retail business. So we did an incredible collaboration with Jill Martin. We did one very recently with Kerry Rosenthal. One of our instructors, Stacey Griffith, has a parallel brand called Love and Sport. And we're just about to do a Love and Soul collaboration with her. Those kind of collaborations really just pour gasoline onto an area of our business that's already enjoying quite explosive growth. And then moving into, as I say, moving into new categories, it is delivering a very healthy return. And so we're just going to continue to build out those collaborations that kind of create a lot of heat, continue to sell the merch. You know, people go to the concert, they want the t-shirt, that long that continue. We've introduced a core collection. So, like in just a basics range that in every single studio, when you walk in, if you've got your leggings or t-shirt or your socks, there's always a core collection there. But also moving into these new categories that just give you more optionality as a consumer, that is what's helping to build that business. And we just think there's more opportunity there that we should be leaning into. And so we've got an amazing head of retail called Emily, and she has brought a lot of retail expertise into our business. And so whilst I think historically we've been we've thought about retail much more as a kind of merchandising business, I'm now looking at it as a no, no, here's a business within a business that has the opportunity to independently be a much bigger part of what we do going forward. And that's what we are leaning quite heavily into right now.

Yeah, yeah, I like that play. It's a really good lesson on how to leverage a mature brand as well. It's like, how do you, you know, how do you extend that out? And it's it's it's interesting. I'll I'll be very keen and see how that progresses. I think it's going to do really well. Let's let's get into the belt. It's interesting, you know.

That's why I said to you, sorry, I was just gonna talk about, you know, the collaborations that I mentioned. We, of course, are seeking to continue to grow our business. And one of the ways that we need to do that is by getting out of our echo chamber. That's why, you know, I mentioned holistic wellness seekers to you before. Those retail collaborations I mentioned, they are one of the marketing levers that we have to get outside of our echo chamber. And that's how we drive revenue growth. So these things, whilst we're not siloed, we think about these things really very much as a matrix. Like our retail business is a very big standalone part of our business, but it also feeds into the brand, the brand marketing, and how we think about brand acquisition. So these things are really wedded together in a very intentional way. And I think that's really important.

Yeah, it is. It's really important. It's great lessons for leaders too, within this category, especially. Let's shift a little bit to the to the bell of the ball, which is technology, artificial intelligence. And I was setting the table earlier, is that uh, you know, I've done at least two or three panels, four or five, maybe this year already, on how artificial intelligence and operators in our industry are adapting it, adopting it, sorry. And, you know, by the time this even airs, it may be, you know, this may not even be qualified as a solid conversation because it's advancing so fast, right? And it's it's overwhelming. I'm overwhelmed. I'm I'm not even forced to use it outside of like maybe a couple creative things in the content production side. But a lot of operators are struggling, right? They want to know, okay, for my specific business, where do I start and how do I move forward? And most of the time, the best when I ask people for advice on this, it's always like, well, find the biggest pain points, right, within your business specifically and see what solutions you can do. So when you look at technology overall and it's advancing, and you I know you have some really creative and cool things that you guys are doing with AI right now from the experiential side. So where where did you start when you're like, okay, what are the problems that we could like? What was your what was your mindset?

Yeah. So it's interesting because I have been extremely interested in AI and how it could apply to our business. And if anything, I I I kind of beat myself up that we're not doing enough. We're doing quite, we are actually doing quite a lot. We started from a very functional perspective. So I'll give you a real live example, right? So I'm sure like all of your listeners, we have a lot of people who naturally find SoulCycle by searching for wellness solutions online and they land on our website. We get about, I don't know, quarter of a million prospects landing on our SoulCycle homepage every month. And these are all non-thery don't ride with SoulCycle. So these are the these are near business league. And we saw, because Google changed their algorithm, that quarter of a million prospects that kept on landing on our homepage, it started to drop a little bit. And this is so reminiscent of my old life in Medium because we used to talk about Google and its bloody algorithms all the time. So the first problem was, oh, we're seeing a slowdown in the number of new prospects landing on our homepage. Why is that? And so we use, we did lots of research across to understand like why was that. And what we realized is that we weren't popping in as many searches, and that was because we didn't have content. So we used AI to create content because we're all all everything we do is to produce content. We tell we're all you know, we're all telling stories. But but how Google can help direct traffic to your set is if you have content. And so I wasn't about to create a content team, a journal team journalist or a media team inside of SoulCycle. It's not when we chose to invest our money. So what we did was we used AI to help us create content. That content is SEO, you know, it's optimized, of course, for search. And so we've seen our traffic bounce again. Google changed their algorithm, that natural organic traffic started to dig slightly. We said we really need to kind of create more content so that consumers understand them for soul experience, what to expect, what it is, how it works for you, the science behind soul, the experience of soul, the experience of our community. I didn't want to create a team of journalists to write that content for me, so we used AI to create it. So that was it, that's where we started. I want to produce more content than we currently do. How can I do that without having to invest in a huge team? We used AI, and then we've got an amazing team, of course, of course, that copy edits and make fact, you know, fact checks and does all the kind of subbing that's required. But the creation of that content was the first time we played in AI. That was the start, and it was like somebody just flicked a switch in my life, and I thought, okay, let's apply that learning to all of our marketing. So we now use AI to help us test language in our advertising. So is does this headline work versus that headline? And AI does that for us. We have lots of, I'm getting into a lot of technical language around our marketing, but you know, we have different messaging themes. We're all trying different messaging themes. AI enables us to do that. Then I went to a fashion conference and heard presentation that a lot of the luxury fashion brands were using AI instead of managing very, very expensive uh very expensive fashion shoots. And I thought that's interesting. We do lots of fashion shoots. I wonder if I can use AI for that. So I tried and failed. I will say failed. Catastrophically failed. It was terrible. But I tried to create AI versions of our instructors so that I didn't have to bring them all in from all over the country to do a fashion shoot, but instead I could use AI to help me do that. I couldn't because they look like aliens. So we we have just it's not always about a problem that we're trying to solve. We're just testing and learning and playing, and we have unlocked some real wins. For example, we have built music is really, really, really important to Soul Cycle. And we know if you are a new rider at Seoul, if I can help you find the instructor that plays the music, the artist, the genre that you particularly enjoy, I am twice as likely to keep you. So I can drive retention. And of course, they're the key business metrics for us acquisition, retention, and frequency, right? That's what we're all focused on. So we have built a tool that enables you to find an AI-driven tool that helps you find the instructor that is going to play the music, the artist, the genre of music that you are more interested in and engaged with. And as a direct consequence of that, we are drop, we are doubling the retention of our new customers. And so my approach to AI is test and learn. Test and learn in every fair, in every field. And I say this all the time, my team think I'm boring. If we do not fail, we are probably not trying hard enough. So, so challenge, we've got to challenge ourselves. So that's why, you know, I always laugh. And I give this example of trying to create AI avatars, if you like, of our instructors. It it was a it what would the technology isn't quite there yet. It will be probably at the end of this podcast. But it wasn't at the time that we tried it. And so solving, yes, solving real problems, business problems, but also just pushing the boundaries of what you think is possible and to uncover where the opportunities are. With this AI tool that I just I just described that where we can help you find the instructor that plays the music that you most enjoy. We call it Ask Marvin. Marvin happens to be our global head of instructor talent acquisition. And so all of the instructors that join us are hand pitched by Marvin. So this AI tool is called Ask Marvin. And we will actually make that publicly available. We use it ourselves for our own internal purposes, but actually we're going to publish that externally so that anybody, any of our riders can say, Oh, I'm in LA and I love riding with Marvin in New York. Who should I be riding with in LA? And it and because of all of the AI inputs from Reddit, Spotify, instructor archetypes, bios, and the energy and vibe that are existing riders, tell us about all of those inputs into this Ask Marvin tool so that you are able to decide actually, I really love hip-hop and I live near nomads. Who should I ride with? Oh, you should ride with Trimel. Oh, I really love Marvin. I'm going to find myself in Denver. Who should I ride with? And so it's a tool that we've built that helped us internally to drive retention frequently. But actually, it's a tool that we are going to make available to our riders.

Yeah. Yeah. That's super interesting. I mean, when when people think about retention across this industry, and uh, you know, like V comes to mind, you and I were talking about that company, and you know, they they use data to, you know, identify specific timings or and and messaging, things like that that needs to go out to each particular. That's how we we we kind of think about. That's always the way we've looked at retention, right? Is like, okay, we got to time it right with the right message to the right person, and you know, we gotta know what they're at risk, which is great, fundamentally great, right? I don't think it's but there's also like this is a very creative way to focus on retention, right? It's like, well, how do we improve the experience and personalize it? And you're personalizing through music selection and you know, the the feeling, the experience of it. So it's there's a lot of creative ways, and I love how you tell people, you know, you gotta you gotta test and fail, reiterate, keep testing, right? Keep running tests. Like that's the only way to do it. And and I get asked quite often too, is like, well, what should operators be doing right now? I'm like, well, use it. Like, you just gotta use it. You should have something open every day. I have Chat GPT, and you know, I have three different ones open all day. I'm constantly using it for different things. I'll ask them the same question three different times, right? Across the board. And I'm curious, what what specific tools do you guys use like for content? Is there a specific tool of choice that you guys like? I like Claude. Um, it's helped me produce a hundred times more content than I could do on my own. So, yeah, what do you guys like?

Yeah. So honestly, I I actually don't know what tools that the teams use. We started as simply as using at the very beginning. We become much more sophisticated now, of course, as we learned a lot, but we started at the very beginning just using Chat GPT, like literally at a very basic level, we wanted to understand what a number of different platforms would enable us to produce. And so we started at the most basic with what's what's you know widely available, just use Gemini or ChatGPT, or you know, whatever those freely available tools are to see what they deliver. And then obviously, we worked with a specific company when we were looking at doing, you know, I was trying to do my AI avatars of instructors and so on, but looking at different tools and different platforms as that strategy kind of evolves and you see what works and what's important. And so, you know, the specific tools that the team use, I I actually don't know, but you you don't even need that much knowledge to get going. I I went to uh and Lorraine Twohill from Google was talking and she she just she said exactly what you just said, which is obviously Google have got Gemini, just start using it, just open it on your desktop, just start using it now. Learn about its potential. And as your understanding of the tools becomes more sophisticated and that you understand what it potentially can do for you, then you can start to lean into other platforms and programs that will help you achieve that. But at the most basic level, just start using what's there freely available on your desktop.

Yeah, yeah. And it's uh you also start to by using it, you start to see the limitations of it currently. I mean, those are changing all the time. Like I can ask it certain questions, and I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. And then I'll ask the question a little bit differently, and then it comes back with a better answer. And you know, it's it's uh sometimes you just gotta be playful. Like I'll I asked it just a couple weeks ago, I'm like, hey, if you were gonna play a sport, what sport would you play and why? And like, you know, the GPT came back with this very specific. It was okay, so it said water polo, right? And then explained why. And then I'm like, well, wait, I played water polo. Are you just messing with me? And they're like, oh, we had no idea, or I had no idea. And I'm like, this, all right, this is now I'm just I gotta leave. I gotta walk away from my computer. This is getting too weird and creepy, right? Well, so yeah, I think just yeah, so I think just being playful with it and testing and things like that, and don't be scared to try and fail with it. I think that's really important because here's the thing everyone else is failing with it because no one knows how to use it. That's right. So it's it's okay. That's right.

We'll we'll only learn if we start to play with it, which is why you know I've I have always had a kind of a test and learn strategy. It's like just try it and see. We we also, and it's not just about AI. I mean, technology writ large is such a huge enabler. At SoulCycle, we used to have something called Soul Beat. So we are not about metrics, we are entirely about music. We ride to the beat of the music, that's why it feels like going to a party or a concert, and it's so joyful. And we're really proud of that, and it's really, really important. But we introduced a piece of technology called Soul Beat, uh, and it was just a piece of hardware that we put on the cranks and it would measure, you know, you know, your app port calories and so on and so on. But it wasn't really scalable and it was a bit of a clunky piece of software. And so we very recently integrated with Apple Healthcare. And it's very so it's a very sole way of getting metrics, right? Because if you choose to wear a wearable, whether that's a WOOOC or an Aura or you've got your you know, Apple watch or you can now get full metrics from your rides at SoulCycle. We integrated with Strava, so if you're on the Strava platform, it you know, it'll always also show up there. So using technology to serve your consumers in a way which is genuine and authentic to your brand. We're not about metrics, we're never gonna have leaderboards at SoulCycle. But if you are the kind of person that does want your metrics because you want to see improvement, you want to see what your outfit, you want to know what your calories burned was, then that is very much available to you because we chose to integrate in a way that was authentic to the soul brand. So technology is just enabling us to continue to evolve the soul cycle experience in a way that is authentic to you and your relationship with SoulCycle. So it's not for us, it's not in your face because we're not, you know, that's not who we are. But if you want metrics, you can get metrics. And that's why we did that. So just constantly looking at all technology. And we I have a brilliant head of technology, Gordre, and he comes from a very strong product background. He is constantly in my office saying these are the new technic, you know, technology-driven tools, features, assets that we could be building. So for me, it's not there's no shortage of opportunity for how we how we leverage and deploy technology. The challenge is not what, it's just what first.

Yeah, well said, very well articulated. And I think that's going to help a lot of people with their um, you know, just their their mental and strategic approach to how to do this. And I I just want to add that I don't think this is a nice-to-have anymore. I think it's a must-have. I think you have to have these logical AI-driven solutions. It doesn't have to be overbearing, but it should fit in nicely, like you're saying, with the brand experience itself, because client expectations and consumer expectations, especially as the younger generation, they just expect us, right? If you don't have something that's personalized within the experience in the next few years, like they're gonna be like, well, what is this? Was this a dinosaur? Like, no, we we we need this. So really great insights, uh, Evelyn. So ask the last question I always ask here is you know, as an industry, what do you what can we help you with? What are some of the biggest pain points? And I mean that as fact, like if people are gonna reach out and they're like, hey, you know, I have a solution for Evelyn or what Evelyn, what what what what would you like to hear from people about?

That's really great. So, so like so many asks. One, I really, really want all to get outside of our echo chamber. So I really believe very strongly that we will continue to build and expand the soul brand through partnering with other brands in our space and in adjacent spaces. So, you know, I talked earlier about we are leaning very heavily into the soul of SoulCycle, like so what other business opportunities, products, services, features can we introduce our business that actually complements what we do on the back, but doesn't necessarily tether us to the bike. And so any thoughts, ideas, partnerships that any of the listeners bring to SoulCycle that help us push into more broadly the wellness space, that help us get out of our record chamber, really, really important. We, like everybody else, you know, I talked about our key business metrics, acquisition, retention, frequency. They're really quite basic. Anybody got, if anybody has any thoughts, ideas as to how we push against any one or all of those metrics. I have actually brought a lot, it's interesting actually, almost being an outsider coming into this category, because I brought a lot of thinking from our meet my media and entertainment gaze into SoulCycle. One of it, one of the things that I think is really powerful is that we get outside of our box and really talk to other industries, other adjacent industries, because we learn so much that I still am very much in the fashion space. And so I still go to a lot of you know uh fashion groups and conferences, I go to a lot of conferences and events in the media space. I think bringing that external perspective into our world really helps all of us because we just expand the dimensions of how we're thinking about our business and how we're solving for some pretty common problems or challenges that I think we all share. So anybody that's got any perspectives on how we continue to drive acquisition potential frequency, partnerships that enable us to really lean into this soul of soul cycle and launch new lines of business, which is what we're very interested in pursuing and and we have been pursuing, then the two areas. And if anybody's got the kind of AI silver bullet, please tell me what that is, and I'll and I'll share what we've learned. I'd be really interested. We don't know what we don't know, which is why I think your point about it's here, it's to me, we've got to jump in feet first and just kind of figure it out. But you know, any perspective from any of your listeners or any other partners about what they're learning from an AI and perspective, what's working, what's not working, I'm super happy to share lots of detail about what we're doing. And I'm fascinated to hear what others are doing.

Awesome, awesome. And if people want to get a hold of uh your team, you know, specific to this stuff, where where would you direct them to go?

Uh in terms of speaking, speaking to our teammates at SoulCycle.

Yes.

Oh, well, anybody I am a big fan of you know giving our team access to others and and vice versa. So anybody that would like to hear anything or contact any of my team, just email me, evelyn.webster at soul-cycle.com. I will be a lovely conduit and I will introduce you to our head of technology, our head of instructor at Global Instructor Talon, our head of marketing, anybody that any uh that you know the listeners would like to meet, I'm very happy to make that connection.

Yeah, awesome, Evelyn. Well, this has been a real pleasure. Um, I think we cover some really important topics. And I think for the leadership in our industry, hearing your perspectives and how you're addressing these things uh with the unique opportunities that you have with SoulCycle, the brand, the technology, the you know, all there's a lot of really great things you guys have going for you. And uh yeah, I apologize for the the lag time and some of the people listening. I I think my internet's bad today, even though I pay for really great internet. So that being said, it's been an absolute pleasure, Evelyn. Thank you for joining me. And uh, ladies and gentlemen, Evelyn Webster.

Thank you so much.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the futurofitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.