Juliet Starret: Work Pain Tolerance & Keeping Kids Moving

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurofitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Do you want to add more years to your life and more life to your years? Of course you do, which means you need to make a change. And that is what Insight Tracker is all about. Founded by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometric data from MIT Tufts in Harvard, Insight Tracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. So what's their secret? First, Insight Tracker uses its patented algorithm to analyze your body's data and offer you a clearer picture than you've ever had before of what's actually going on inside you. Then, Insight Tracker provides you with a concrete, science-backed action plan for living a longer, healthier life. And it tracks your progress every day, every step of the way. For a very limited time, Insight Tracker is offering future of fitness podcast listeners 25% off storewide. Visit InsightTracker.com slash future to get your offer code and try to Insight Tracker today. Insight Tracker, because change is an inside job.

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Thank you so much for having me, Eric. I'm delighted to be here.

Yeah, this is gonna be a ton of fun. I I was as we were discussing before, like, where do I even start with you? Yeah. Athlete, entrepreneur, wife, mother, philanthropist, do you sleep? Number one. And number two, uh, let's start with this. How did you get a Wikipedia page? I want my own Wikipedia page.

It's so interesting. Wikipedia is so weird, and I had no idea that I had a Wikipedia page. And I actually think it was one of my kids who discovered it because your kids are my kids are now 12 and 15, and this maybe was like a year and a half ago or two years ago. I think they just were like, hey, I'm gonna Google myself and I'm gonna Google my parents and see what comes up. Like it was their first attempt at discovering what's going on here. And and they're like, hey, you have a Wikipedia page. And I was like, What? I have a Wikipedia page. So what's so weird about Wikipedia is that someone out there in the world, and by the way, it's clear that whoever made my Wikipedia page also made Kelly's. Like they obviously said StarEts should have a Wikipedia page. And so I'm going to make one for them. But what's so weird about Wikipedia is you have no idea who that is. And I I think the rules with Wikipedia are that you can't really go in and edit your own page because I think what they don't want is it to become like a marketing platform for people or people to embellish their skills and abilities or accomplishments or whatever. So it's meant to be like fact-based and crowdsourced. But I was as shocked as anyone. I was like, wow, I have a Wikipedia page. Okay. I don't know. Do you know anything more about how that platform works?

And you know, yeah, yeah. I just know it it makes you legit, I think. Uh I don't have one. I don't think I do. I've never even searched myself.

So you should because I would never have searched myself either. And if my kids hadn't been like, hey, you have a Wikipedia page, I'm not sure I ever would have known. I might have just found out today on this podcast when you told me.

Well, so to all four of my listeners, if you guys want to build me a Wikipedia page, I'll take it. Uh you can say anything. Actually, no, I take that back. That's a huge open door.

Yeah, that's way too open of a Doric. You don't want to open that door.

Yeah, I take that back. I'm gonna delete that out.

Yeah, it's gonna be like some high school friend of yours remembers something funny you did in high school, and then that's gonna end up in your like personal history section.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, hey, do you remember when you threw yogurt at Lauren Gino in seventh grade? That's what it's gonna be. Uh anyway, back to you. I had Kelly on the show not too long ago, and it's become just through other conversations with a lot of, I guess, the entrepreneurial people within the fitness community that you really are in no district together. Your brain who puts it all together on the back end and pushes this thing forward. And you're and you do a lot, right? Like I listed in jokingly of all the things you do from gym ownership to an online business that's booming to the the philanthropy philanthropic side of things with stand-up kids, like you do a lot. And it's really key to get you on here and we can talk about maybe uh how the business side of fitness has grown. I think that's a really interesting topic. But to set the context, can you just give us a little bit of your backstory, Juliet?

Yeah, I will. And and I just have a uh subtext to say there. I think one note for your listeners is that there's actually a lot of scientific data to support this notion that we have this idea that there's like this like single person who does amazing things, like Einstein, or if you think of all the like great people who've done impactful things throughout history. Turns out every single one of those people was working in a duo, like without exception, right? You look at Google, you can literally read Hastings of Netflix. Like nobody knows that Reed Hastings has this like 100% 50-50 co-founder guy who was equally as as important, if not in many ways, more important than Reed Hastings in making Netflix what it is today. And if you look throughout history, it's like most successful situations are usually like a duo, right? It's just that Kelly, Kelly's superpower is he's so amazing in front of the camera. He it is so great at connecting with people like digitally and in person. But man, we just have this like lucky great partnership that we came to with two totally separate skill sets. Um, the other one that I just saw, which I recommend, is I just watched the Billie Eilish documentary, which is crazy, by the way. But what you don't realize is Billie Eilish is like 40% of the talent and relationship in her duo. She actually has been working since the beginning with her brother, who writes all the songs and puts them all together. And he is like equally, if not more of a genius than Billie Eilish. So, anyway, I'm certainly not saying I am a genius and I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying we actually follow this sort of classic scenario, which is we are successful because we are a duo and we both have these separate skill sets. So, anyway, my background is athletically, I started off actually as a rower. I was on the crew team in high school and then I rode at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate. But during that time, I actually became a river rafting guide, which sort of connected to my rowing background. And I joined this super weird fringe sport on the national team called extreme whitewater paddling. It's actually a rafting and kayaking, a confined rafting kayaking event. Here in the United States, like 10 people do it. Not really, there's more than that, but it's super fringe, and most people haven't heard of it. But interestingly, across the world, it's very popular. And if you go to countries like Japan and New Zealand and a lot of Eastern Bloc and Eastern Bloc European countries and even mainstream European countries, it's actually like a big deal. And the athletes are paid by their government, like any other sort of big national team level sport. But because I had this sort of deep athletic background as a rower, and then I had gotten some chops working on class four and five rivers as a guide as my summer job in college, I was able to make this national team. And so I spent five years in my 20s doing a combination of professional athletism and working odd jobs to support myself on the side because we had some small sponsors, but it wasn't at all CrossFit athletes today or whatever. We had enough to get by and we got a lot of free equipment and gear and travel expenses paid for. But during that time, we won five national championships and then traveled all over the world, won two world championships, got second place and three other world championships. But perhaps most importantly, at my last open level world championship, Kelly appeared. And he and his team, we, our entire team was from California, and he and his team had qualified out of Colorado. So that's why we didn't prior, you know, previously know each other. And we met at this crazy world championship on a river called the Foodulay Fu, which is in southern Patagonia in Chile. And we just had this immediate connection and so much in common, both from our childhoods to our athletic backgrounds. And then somehow we'd both ended up in this weird French sport and traveling. He actually lived in Durango and I lived in San Francisco. And I had actually, this was going to be my last race. I was retiring and starting law school six months after this race. We really hit it off, and Kelly actually ended up moving to San Francisco because I was like, this is gonna work out between us. You need to come to San Francisco because I have already gotten into law school and I'm going. He left his whole life in Durango and came out to San Francisco, and that's when he discovered that he wanted to go to physical therapy school. I then became a lawyer and I actually practiced at a big, huge international law firm doing complex commercial litigation for nearly seven and a half years, but four of those years actually overlapped with running San Francisco CrossFit and then Mobility Wad at the beginning. And I do here's what my friend Allison says about me is she's like, you have high work pain tolerance. And by the way, during all that, I actually had two kids in the mix as well. So yeah, so I do have high, so I have high work pain tolerance, although there is a limit, and that's actually part of the reason why I eventually decided to step away from my law practice because I was running the business side of the gym. Mobility water was starting to be a thing. And I was like, okay, I am only one person and I can't, I can't do a full-on billable hour, full-on law firm job, and then run two businesses on the side. There is actually a human limit. So I left my law practice, which I think at the time people in my life must have thought was crazy because I was on the verge of becoming partner. I was making a lot of money. At that time, San Francisco CrossFit was still in a parking lot. So I think, especially a lot of the other lawyers I worked with are like, this is a very weird choice. Like you're leaving this really stable job. You're about to become partner and make even more money and have more stability, and you're gonna go leave this to work at a parking lot gym and make videos about stretching. So I think it was a little hard for people to accept, but but I don't know. I just I had this feeling that there was something to it and that Kelly and I together could make something of these things. We never started either one of them really as a business to make money. We started them, we started San Francisco CrossFit because we're like, yes, CrossFit is fun. This is awesome. And then we started mobility why because we're like, wow, everybody is broken and nobody understands how their bodies work. Really, those were like that, those were our business plans to solve those two problems. We really did not ever think, okay, let's try to monetize these businesses. How can we make money? What investors can we get? That was never a part of our conversation. So fast forward, I left my law practice, I think, in two in 2009. So fast forward 12 years, we we had a great run of San Francisco CrossFit. We can talk about it going out of business thanks to the pandemic if we want to or not. But it was actually a hugely successful gym. And we were the 21st CrossFit affiliate. And I feel despite its sort of terrible demise, I feel really proud of what we were able to do there over 15 years. And since that time, Mobility Wad, which started off as really a collection of free YouTube videos, has grown into a real life business where we have almost 16,000 subscribers. And we've taught tens of thousands of coaches how to be better at coaching. And we teach people how to take care of their bodies and be ready for whatever they want to do. In 2019, we rebranded from Mobility Wad to the Ready State, which has been a great transition for us as a company. And you and I can talk about that if it's interesting. But it's just, I've just been having a blast over the last 15 years learning how to be an entrepreneur. And one of the things I love about it is I don't know if any entrepreneur ever reaches this point where they're like, I got this. I'm great at this. I am now an expert, right? Like there is so much to know, so much to learn. There's it's just this always moving target, being being an entrepreneur, trying to grow a business, scale, hire people, manage people. It's just there's always something to learn. And so I think that's really what excites me the most is that I am I literally have never been bored for one second in 15 years that I've been running businesses. That was a really long explanation.

That was awesome. That was great. And there's so many, I was taking notes on things I want to pick out a little bit. It's interesting because a good friend and associate Jim Kroll posted something and he asked the question of what do you love about what you do? And I'm like, for good or bad, I love that I'm never bored as being a business owner and you know, entrepreneur and just doing all the things that I do. And I think people who have been doing it for a while or been out, quote unquote out on their own, there's a ton of humility. Even talking to Kelly, I asked you know questions of how did you be successful? And you can tell when people have been at the game for a while, they're like, man, uh you call this success. Like sometimes I don't really feel like it, right? And you know, it's always this there's always you always when things are going really good, you always know there's something that's gonna trip you up right around the corner. And that just becomes the way of life. And it's really interesting. I want to go back to your decision to leave law and go to this gym business. What was your I I have a structure that I run through for what I call big scary decisions. How did you what did you factor in when making that decision? Was it purely emotional? Did you feel like you had a plan? Did you go with the burn your burn your ships method? What was your framework for making that?

Well, what I'll start by saying is it took me almost two years to actually make the decision because again, I had this stable job. I had chosen this as my career path. Also, I was good at it. And contrary to a lot of lawyers, I actually can't say that I loved being a lawyer, but I didn't mind it and I was good at it. That there was that to consider, right? Like, did I want to really take this like total 180 in my career path? But there were a couple of big factors in the decision. I started having this really weird experience where in this one part of my life, which was the gym, we had created this amazing community that was all about like joy and health and fitness and like how do you become this like happy, joyful, actualized human. And on the other hand, I'm working at this law firm where most of my cases are drug and medical device product liability cases. You're, and I'm on the defense side representing pharmaceutical companies, but you're dealing with these cases where like the people on the other side, the plaintiffs are always at the lowest part of their life and have have been low and have had massive amount of health problems. And then combine that with the fact that the practice of law, especially at big firms, is very stressful and people work really hard. And one subtext about that is that I mean to people in the health and fitness business. There's a lot of people in this business who think they work hard. And I'm like, no, you don't, you do not, you don't work hard at all. You don't even know what that means, right? Because I've worked at a big, huge law firm where people work actually 14 and 15 hour days on the regular, they work a lot of weekends and and it's high stakes work very stressful. You're dealing with like federal courts and courts, and there's just like a level of stress that is involved with that job that is even on my most stressful day as an entrepreneur, does not hold a candle to that. And just in terms of the sheer, I know a lot of entrepreneurs who are like, I work really hard. I'm like, no, you don't. And so anyway, I'm a little mean about that. But but simultaneously though, there's an impact to that, right? Like lawyers don't work that much and that hard without a huge impact to their health. So what I saw in front of me, because what when you're doing anything professionally, you want to think, or at least I do. I think, okay, at that time I was like 35. I looked for what are the what's up with the 45-year-old lawyers? What's up with the 55-year-old lawyers? Do I want to have their life? Do I see myself in them? And the challenge for me was I didn't. Yeah, they all had a lot of money and maybe they had like a nice house in Tahoe, but I don't think they really got to enjoy it that much. There was like a lot of people were divorced, and a lot of people had, you know, drug and alcohol problems, and a lot of people hadn't exercised in years. And so I had this one part of my life that was all about health and fitness, which was my like sub-passion. And then this other part of my life that was like doing cases that involve sick people and working with a lot of people who's and it's fine. Their priority, I'm not no judging, like their priority wasn't being healthy and fit, like their priority was being a kick-ass attorney, which is fine. But I just somehow I couldn't reconcile those two things in my life. And and then secondarily, I'm also a really practical person. And so I never, and by that point, we had two kids. I would not have made a stupid decision. By the time I left my law firm job, we felt pretty confident that between by that time Kelly had started teaching some seminars, we actually had legitimate revenue at the gym. We were making money and we had a lot of members, and the gym was clearly growing like it was on an upward trajectory. I could also see just from a practical standpoint, like we were going to be fine financially. Like we would be able to pay our mortgage and like pay for our kids' preschool. And so I was like, there was also just this purely practical, like it was not a stupid decision. And then I think the third big factor is I'm a big fan of a fallback, right? Like I'm all about taking risks, but I'm also not a fan of taking unnecessary risks. So one thing that I think has always been very calming for Kelly and I as entrepreneurs is like at the base, like I'm an attorney and Kelly is a physical therapist. And even if the ready state or all of our business just blow up in our face, like I could, even though I'm 10 years out, still go back and get a well-paying law firm job. And Kelly could go to a physical therapy clinic or a hospital and get a physical therapy job, and we would be just fine. It might not be like our passion jobs, but we always had that as a fallback, which I think took away some of this level of like panic, I think that some entrepreneurs feel like, okay, if I don't get this right, I'm gonna be homeless, I think, which is a common feeling. Um, I think we always just had this level of calm. We're like, if this doesn't work out, like we have a fallback plan. So I think it was a complex decision for me. I think the other thing that was so important that I haven't even really thought about until more recently, both of my parents, who you'd think like parents would be like, What are you doing? You are crushing it as a lawyer, like you have two kids, why would you leave this? Both of my parents actually were like totally supportive and thought it was a great idea. And I think that also getting that endorsement from my parents, I think also just helped me make that decision. But I will say it wasn't a quick one. I really spent a long time sort of thinking it through. So I think it was both emotional and practical. But I definitely would not have left my law firm job if I didn't see there's something to this, I think we can make it.

Ah, it's so interesting. And I I pull so much from that because I made a decision back in 08, right around the time where I was actually popping into weightlifting Wednesday at San Francisco CrossFit. And I had a good corporate job. I was in sales, I was uh had just been promoted, and I was probably on track to be a VP within the next five years. And uh I'm like, well, I think I'm gonna pull the rip court, actually leave San Francisco, go to Santa Barbara, which is a town I'd never been in. Where did I know anybody? I'm gonna open this little CrossFit gym. And I ran through this thing, I'm like, what is the worst thing that can happen? And worst things can happen, I can always go get another sales job. And to this day, I still go by that. I'm like, I know. I could.

You could. You still could.

I see. I still could. And I think that does take a lot of risk. And I think there's certain things people have to understand their own personal risk profile and how they do things. But how walking through those steps, what's the worst thing that can happen? Would I regret it not having tried? All these different questions you can ask yourself are really important. And I'm always intrigued by how people come about these decisions, but generally kind of boils down to the same thing is very few people are like, I'm not making any money now. I'm in debt. So I think I'll go start a new business. It's not really, it doesn't really happen that often. Usually there's some fallback methods behind it.

So can I just add one other thing to that story that I forgot that I think is important and funny because now he's a dear friend of ours. But during that time, I also read Tim Ferris's book, The Four Hour Work Week. Someone passed it off to me. And Tim, by the way, in full disclosure, is a friend of ours. And I think we met him back then, but we didn't know him that well. And I didn't read that book or take away that like my goal in life was to work four hours a week. That wasn't what it was at all. But what I gleaned from that book that was so important for me was that like you want to design, you can actually design the life you want to have. So I think there were the these other factors for me that I was like, hey, I really am into my kids. And while I am not stay-at-home mom material, it's really important to me to keep working and I love to work. I also want to be present and available for my kid. And if my kid has a band concert at 11:30 a.m. on a weekday, I want to be able to go to that. So I think that I think that book was just a revelation for me in realizing like, look, if I want my life to look like this, then I need to do these things. Like it's and it's any, it's just honestly no different from any kind of goal setting process, right? Like in five years, I want to be here. What things do I need to do here? And so one of the things for me there was like, what kind of parent do I want to be? And what I did know is I didn't want to be an absent parent. And so I thought the law practice in many ways, it can, but for me, it didn't feel like it could support the kind of parent I wanted to be. So that was a big uh part of that decision as well.

Yeah, it's huge. That book was actually really instrumental for me too. I think everyone had different takeaways. I never believed that there was a four-hour work.

No, no, me either.

Um, but uh I did think the fact, like, oh, you can actually build more of a digital business and move somewhere where you can lower your cost of living, increasing your quality of life. That kind of stuff I pulled away and like outsourced things. I was one of the first people to use a VA, I think that I knew. So it was really interesting. That was a great book. And you know what? I I think a really interesting thing for to talk about is the business side of fitness. And I know that's a huge, broad topic that actually was funny, probably wasn't even a thing until six or seven years ago when people were like, Oh, I gotta learn about business, I can't just be a great trainer. That was pretty quick, but you've we've seen some drastic changes over the last year. Things are starting to shift quite drastically, but now we saw this accelerant in the fitness industry. And I'm curious, having you guys had this highly reputable and successful brick and mortar, and then you had mobility law that you switched to Ready State. Walk through like from your point of view, how has the fitness industry shifted over the last year? And where do you think it's gonna, what do you think it's gonna look like five years from now?

Yeah, I think this is such an interesting time for the fitness business. And I will go back and say, I feel like the other most interesting time was actually the advent of CrossFit in 2003 to 2005, who I think CrossFit was like the most disruptive thing that's happened to the fitness business in a long time. But separate from that, obviously this pandemic has created this really interesting sort of inflection point for this business. As I'm sure everybody sees, it's like tonal was just got a hundred million dollar investment in Lululemon bot mirror, and Peloton is destroying the universe with its success because everybody's Pelotoning at home during the pandemic and nobody can order a dumbbell. So there's this huge explosion of people figuring out how to exercise and train on their own outside of a brick and mortar gym environment. And man, on any given day, I go back and forth on with the answer to the question will people go back to gyms? On some days, I think if I look at my own community and the people around me, I think no way they will, because people have built out these dope home gyms and bought their Peloton and they figured out they've bought a go ruck and a rucking on the weekends with their friends. And people have really been, they've had access to and been able to be really creative with their own training on their own. And then I think people have also developed these like mini training communities. As even back when you owned a CrossFit or I did it was like there wasn't like programming online everywhere. Now it's you can go to one million websites and apps that have free programming that you can follow. So that's no longer a barrier. You can literally just type into your phone, like, what should I do today? And you can have literally 1,000 things served to you. So, what what the digital side has done for fitness is extraordinary. And then I think the pandemic has really there is a reason why all these big investment firms are throwing massive amounts of money at all this digital fitness. And I think the reason is that they think it's going to stay, and that perhaps the brick and mortar gym world is gonna contract quite a bit. I think where that when I questioned that though, I question that when I think about what was so lovely about San Francisco CrossFit, and I think why it was so meaningful to so many people, including us, was that yes, we were serving up fitness and we had really great coaches who were the best in the business. But really, that place was special because of the community. People made their best friends there and met their wives. And and it's just, it was like it was just such an important touch point for people in their lives that when I think about that, I think there's no way people aren't going to go back to in-person gyms because we need that so much as humans and we crave it. And what I think Kelly and I realized when we closed San Francisco CrossFit is that it was like a church for so many people. And I think it was so shocking when we closed because I think nobody expects your local Catholic church on the corner to close. And when your local Catholic church closes, you're like, what the hell? Like, I thought this was gonna be here forever. So I really I don't think I have an answer because I do, I am I feel so split on it, literally day by day. I think there's this, we're just gonna move to this connected digital environment where everybody's on apps and on tech like tonal and mirror and Peloton. And then I I totally swing the other way on some days and think, no way, like actually communing with other humans in a fitness environment is like one of the greatest things that can happen because it's not only about community, but it's bringing people together to do healthy practices like exercising. And how is that not going to have a gigantic resurgence? I can't really answer that with any clarity. I'd love to know what you think.

Yeah, I think about it all the time.

And yeah, me too.

It's and I think I'm with you. I do to reiterate what you said, I think I saw an article was about two $2.4 billion of investment money came into the fitness industry in 2020. That's bananas compared to what you and I have known for the industry, which has typically been fairly poor.

And if I'm not mistaken, most of that is in like digital and tech, right?

Connected and tech, wearables, all of it. So I don't know. I do think I had Connor, he's the CEO of Glowfox on this recently, and he's by the data, we're actually seeing a lot of very favorable with countries that are reopening. We're seeing a lot of favorable data, the gyms will thrive again. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. I'm a big fan of data, but you don't know, you really don't know. And I think there's also like here, we're in this area, there's SBG uh Street Blast Gyms, which is the jujitsu academies, and they're still thriving.

Yeah.

Right? They're booming. So there's all these little communities, I think you're right, are gonna boom, and I think it's gonna come back. We just don't know to what extent and what that looks like. What I do think is that we will see, and we are seeing, a culling of the herd of and that's uncomfortable for people to hear, but it's true. Maybe people are writing on razor thin margins in their gym business, and or they just simply decide, you know what, this I just don't want to do this anymore because it is a burly thing to run a gym, especially a boutique gym. It takes a certain kind of person. Rob Wolf said that word. It was really, I'm like, that's stuck with me. It does take a burly type of person. So maybe people just don't want to do it anymore. So I think we're seeing people who are gonna adopt the technology and adapt to it really well and use it and then become more professional and increase their value in the market. And I'm hoping that this actually, I'm an optimist, I'm also a nasty realist. So you look like, okay, well, I'm thinking this is gonna make the profession or make it more professional. We're gonna increase our value because the people come out of this are gonna be really serious about what they're doing, and the hobbyists are not gonna be here anymore. So I don't know if that's an answer, but that's what I'm seeing. I think gyms are gonna bounce back. I here's a question for you. What tech what technology are you most excited about in the world of fitness and health? There's a lot, right?

There's a lot of technology. Let me tell you what I use. Yeah. Um, because obviously if I use it, yeah, my tech sac. I actually religiously wear whoop because after many years of having kids and being an early entrepreneur, as you suggested at the beginning of this podcast, I uh definitely did not get enough sleep for quite a few years. Five or six years ago, I was like, that's over. I am prioritizing my sleep at all costs. And so now we Kelly and I are pretty militant about getting enough sleep and trying to make sure we protect our sleep and get quality sleep. But I am a true believer. It actually was Kyle from Kyle Kingsbury from On It was at San Francisco CrossFit a few years ago, and they had just had a baby. And I don't know if he was using a whoop or an aura ring or whatever, but he showed me his data and he thought it was so hilarious because he said, I don't get it. He said, I didn't get it. I was laying in bed every night for 10 hours, and I just didn't understand why I felt so exhausted the next day. And then he was showing me his data and he'd have he would have 50 disturbances everything like. Oh, sure. And so that was a little, it was fun to see him show me that data. And that's when I was like, I need to be tracking this because I don't know if I am getting enough sleep or quality sleep. I also know that with heart rate variability and a lot of the other data points, we actually really are learning ways that you can improve that. It's not just, I don't love data with for like just having data. Like I really do enjoy having actionable data. And to the extent that we can now pretty carefully track our heart rate variability and that there's some basic things you can do in your life to improve that number and get more restful sleep. I I think having some data around that is helpful. So I do love my whoop. I check it every day, and I actually have a group with a bunch of my friends, and so I can see what they're doing. And so I enjoy that. I wear an Apple Watch. I feel mixed about that as a technology piece. I think it's the most useful for me in tracking my steps, which I am obsessed also with doing because separate and apart from my fitness routine and everybody's fitness routine, Kelly and I have been going around the world for a while saying, Hey, yeah, it's great that you crossfit for an hour a day, but then you sat in your chair for 18 hours. Um, so you actually are a sedentary person. And I think people would bristle at hearing that because they're like, I was so rad, I did so many thrusters today. And then they canceled out all their thrusters by sitting in a chair for 18 hours, Netflixing and computering and whatever they're doing. So I really try to make a point of making sure I walk and move enough during the day. So I think that's really like the only thing I use my Apple Watch for is a step tracker, which is I'm sure they would die on the inside because they have so many more technical things in that app and platform. But and then beyond that, I don't use any other real connected fit. Oh, sorry, I do use an app called Sufferfest because I'm a big mountain biker. And it, even though we had this early conversation about this really lovely winter we're having with no rain, I still do to like once a week at least, especially if it's raining, I like to get a long ride in. And Sufferfest is this kind of follow-along program. It's for it, it has some similarities to like Peloton programming, but it's for people who are more serious athletes or at least fashion themselves as such. If you're like a real cyclist, you're like, I don't do spinning classes, I do suffer fest or I do Zwift. So I use Sufferfest. But yeah, we don't, and then in many ways, we're old school. Like most of our fitness practices look like traditional CrossFit workouts. We do couplets and triplets and we try to make sure we're lifting some heavy weights every so often. So I don't have a ton of, we don't, we do not own a Peloton. So I don't have a ton of personal connection with a lot of all a lot of the things that are happening in connected fitness. I think what I'm interested in, and a lot of companies are trying to do this and coming knocking on our door for our advice, is there are a lot of big companies that are working really hard to get do a lot of interesting stuff with AI and trying to do AI mobility tests and try to figure out how to prevent injuries based on the way people are moving. And what's super interesting about these tech platforms is that they have the money and resources to put together the tech, but then they don't know what to test. They don't know what to test and they don't know what to do with people after they get the results. And so we actually are having a lot of really interesting conversations with big, huge companies that are trying to do a lot of interesting AI stuff related to fitness and movement, mechanics, mobility. And we're doing a lot of consulting with those companies because they can build the tech and they have the money to do that and they don't know what to do with the data or how to advise people to deal with the data. So I think that is the future, is this AI piece. But we are it is so early still, I think. So, but I I think that's the future. I think that's what we're gonna start to see. You take your phone, you you know, point it at yourself, and you get a ton of really interesting, actionable data about how to move better or how to lift more or whatever metric it is you're trying to achieve. I think it's it will happen, but it's very early.

Yeah, I'm I'm totally on board. I think AI is gonna be a huge part that pulls it all together because there is so much data. Like people have no idea how much data that is completely mind-blowing. It's actually impossible to even comprehend.

And you look at like so much.

You talked about the whoop and your Apple Watch, that's data. Then you start looking at like companies like Tonal have their own data that they're collecting, and then Insight Tracker and companies like that are collecting a ton of data. I'm sure you guys are collecting data at the ready state through so much data, but what is no one knows what to do with it yet? And that's where we saw this overwhelming phase of okay, let's get tech out into the the world, especially health and fitness tech. And then now it's everyone's standing back, like, okay, now we have a tsunami of data. What do we do with it?

Yeah, what are we tests?

What do we do? So that's been really interesting. I I work with Joel at Morpheus and what he's doing, and there's gonna be a lot of data there. And of course, I'm also starting working on locally inside tracker and they're sponsoring this podcast. Thank you guys. So there's so much data to be taken. I think that's a really interesting thing. And before I know I want to respect your time, but I there is something I really want to get into because with Kelly we talked about the ready state, but we didn't get to talk about much about stand-up kids. And I know that's something that's really passionate about you guys are super passionate about the philanthropic side of what you guys are doing. So maybe give us some insights on what that is and how, yeah, I'd be curious how people can get involved in it.

Sure. We started stand-up kids in 2014. The very, I would say the very earliest, the the very sort of early idea there was Kelly in, I want to say way back in 2010, actually did a Google talk. And it was based on what he was seeing in his physical therapy practice, which was people were just sitting too much, and half the people that came to his office for nagging pain or injury or whatever were like totally confused about the fact that they had low back pain. And then he would say how much he was sitting in. Literally, people were like, 16 hours a day, but I crossed it for one hour though. So that was Kelly started seeing that he's look, I cannot help these people in there improve. There's no amount of like physical therapying and like little corrective exercises I can give these people that's gonna overcome just the sheer amount of sitting they're doing every day. So I think that's what got this idea in Kelly's mind. He gave a Google talk about it. He's he just started this early conversation about, hey, you can't wonder why you tore your ACL as a recreational triathlete when you got up at five every morning and trained from five to five to some amount of time and then sat there for 18 hours. Like there's a reason why you tore your ACL. And a lot of it is that you sat there with all your joints at 90 degree angles for the vast majority of your waking hours. So that was the early start. But we realized actually when our kids were in elementary school that here we were in our physical therapy practice and in our gym and on podcasts, telling everyone, like, hey, just try not to sit so much, especially if you want some level of athletic performance in your life, like just maybe reduce your sitting a little bit and maybe get a standing desk. But by the way, back then there were like no standing desks on the market. So we were just telling people to like pile up an Amazon box or two and their copy of Supple Leopard and get their going with a standing desk. And but we saw uh our kids in elementary school and we realized we're like, wow, our kids between homework, being in school, watching Netflix, our kids are sitting like 12 hours a day. So we were like, we are total hypocrites, like we're telling all these people to stand, and then we're like sending our kids off to school. So we actually experimented with a few classrooms at our daughter's elementary school and eventually converted the whole school. So all 450 kids were standing at school. Interestingly, kids actually much more naturally adapt to standing than adults. We for adults, you have to put adults on a shaping gradient and you stand for 20 minutes the first day and slowly move towards standing more throughout the day. Important subtext that we aren't fans of standing and we aren't anti-sitting. What we're fans of is moving. And the reason that we like standing desks is that they give you much more of an opportunity to move and change positions throughout the day. So that just make sure we have that caveat because some people will come back at me and be like, well, isn't standing bad? And what is it is sitting really bad? And no, neither one of those things are good or bad, or I'm not gonna put any weight on any of those things. But what we aren't doing enough as humans unequivocally is moving enough. And it's really hard to move and fidget and change positions in the way we need to when we're sitting in a chair, especially one with like amazing lumbar support where we can just recline all day and literally never move our tissues. So we converted our entire kids' classroom. What's cool is that my daughter Caroline likes never sat at school for her entire elementary school career, which is amazing. So it's not weird for her to stand and work. And since then, we've been working around the country. We actually really shifted our focus to more low-income schools. And it's very hard for us to track all our data, but we think we're around 95,000 kids we've converted in schools from sitting to standing. And again, some parents will say, My kid can't stand for six continuous hours. And it's like, all I can say is think about how kids actually work and how an actual elementary school classroom works. Most lessons are not more than 15 minutes. So kids will stand for a block and then they'll sit crisscross applesauce on the floor for a while and they'll run out to recess. And so what their day looks like physically is very dynamic. And the standing desk just adds this more dynamic piece. And we've seen some amazing results. Like we had parents email us and say, wow, like my son used to get in way more trouble and get sent to the principal's office more because he was getting out all of his energy by punching his neighbor. And instead, he can fidget away at his standing desk and he can focus and pay attention. And we've just gotten so much good feedback. And teachers get it because what we're doing as parents is letting our kids watch endless amounts of Netflix, having them sit, do their homework, and then and probably feeding them maybe too much processed food and sugar. And then we send them off to school and be like, good luck to you. We've set, we've set you up for failure as teachers because we are sending you kids who haven't moved enough and are high on sugar and Doritos. So teachers get it because they're the ones who like are seeing that in practice every day and they're looking, like they're seeking ways to help their kids be able to move and be more active during the school day. So it's it's cool. Obviously, in the pandemic, we've slowed down our activity. People can learn way more at standupkids.org and what we're doing, and we're just raising money. What we're actually excited about, and it's on hold because of the pandemic, but we actually are working with researchers at UC Berkeley to do a study on a bunch of fourth grade classrooms. There is actually quite a bit of data and studies that have been done on kids and standing desks and the positive effects, but more needs to be done because we think the only way that we're gonna really make like ginormous change in this world is if governments are involved, right? If the state of California is gonna build a new school, we want it to be standard practice that they put standing desks or movement-rich environment classrooms like as a matter of course. And that's when this is really gonna go nuclear, is when we can get this kind of institutional level change. And in order to do that, we realize that we need more data to present. So we're working with UC Berkeley, and our study has been postponed by an entire year because of the pandemic, because we need kids to be actually in school in order to get the data we need. So it looks like we won't start to have data rolling in until 2022 now. But our ultimate goal is to gather a bunch of amazing data and like march into legislatures and say, hey, look, like this is the way kids should be learning and we need to add more movement to their day. What I will say, and this also connects to the conversation we had earlier just about the fitness business, I actually am in a phase of my life. In this business of feeling critical of the fitness business generally, and I'm in it, so I include myself.

Yeah.

But if I think of us and those of us who are in the fitness business and into fitness as a vertical, we've done like a really good job for ourselves, right? Like we follow the paleo diet and we lift and we do all different kinds of training. We've gotten more fit and more abs and we've really figured out how to hack this fitness system. And meanwhile, the rest of the country is declining in health and obesity is massively increasing. And as we see in the pandemic, it's a giant problem and massively increasing people's risk of death in COVID. And nobody's talking about that, by the way. And so I feel like I'm not sure where we've gone wrong in the fitness business that we haven't been able to bring more and different kinds of people into the conversation. I don't know if we've overcomplicated things. Like if we really want to have an impact, because talking like you mentioned this massive amount of influx into fitness, like the amount of money that's gone into the health and fitness connected environment in particular. And I'm like, okay, but like we have like 60% of American adults are obese. And that number has been increasing as gyms have as more gyms have opened and more fitness apps have hit the market. And right. So like where's the disconnect? I don't know. But what I know is that stand-up kids is our little teeny micro, it's a micro nonprofit. It's our little micro way of saying, okay, let's try to take away some of the complication here and just start with this baseline idea that like kids and adults alike need to move more throughout their day. Like, let's just start with that very basic thing. Like, first principle, we need to move more throughout our day. Whether that's walking or pelotoning or whatever it is, it like we don't need to be precious about it. People just need to move more throughout the day. And if we can just get that message out and create environments for kids to move more, that's just like our little slight micro way. We feel like we're trying to combat what I think is a way bigger problem in this health and fitness business, that we've like done a great job in our vertical and we are not, we haven't figured out how to reach beyond that.

Yeah.

I and to I want to really emphasize what you said there too. The fitness industry has gone wrong, and I do feel bad about it sometimes because I've been part of it. Every every 30-day challenge I run, ran set the wrong tone. I've I think we've all overcomplicated it to almost make ourselves more necessary to the public. Does everyone need a six-month periodized program with all this intricacies and all no? You just like you said, let's focus on some fundamentals of hey, let's get an extra hour of sleep every night. Let's move a little bit more and let's just remove a little bit more processed food. But where's the money in that? That's that's that's where we're at.

Kelly and I are just we're laughing to ourselves because we just feel like we've become so boring, like we've become these evangelists for those basic practices. And everyone's wow, we were expecting you to talk about all this rad stuff related to fitness. And then we go on podcasts and we're like, hey, nobody's sleeping enough. Maybe add an extra half an hour hour of your sleep, maybe eat a few vegetables throughout your day. That'd be great. And hey, why don't you take a walk? Like, maybe take a walk. And so it's funny to see how this because even 10 years ago, man, we were like, you have to be doing thrusters and pull-ups and you have to be doing this, and definitely you should not eat any grains paleo diet for life. And and we've been in that frame of mind before. And I think I don't know if it's just our advanced age or how long we've been in this industry or whatever, but we definitely have, we just feel like we've become so reasonable because we hear so much noise around us and we see even people we know that aren't in this business and don't consider themselves athletes and are, let's say, struggled to lose 40 pounds in their life. Like, we bear witness to it in our own community where people are like, what in the hell am I supposed to do? Should I intermittent fast? Should I do this? Should I carb cycle? Should I do the RP diet? Like people literally have no idea what to do. And Kelly and I are like, hey, maybe you should just eat a vegetable. Maybe have one during your day. How about that? Start there. It's not sexy. I agree. There's no money in it, and it's not sexy, but at least that's where our brains are right now.

Yeah. And it's it is the typical coach's journey where I first of all, like when I first started coaching, there was a good two-year period of my life where I'm pretty sure I was convinced actually that paleo and CrossFit could solve any problem. That was it. World War.

Yeah, anything. I was just like, yeah, I was like, my abs are on point right now. I haven't eaten, I haven't eaten a piece of bread in six years. I'm like, I can do like a hundred thrusters in a row and I'm winning it life. Like I was so in that same. I was with you in there. I was totally with you.

And then and then I realized it wasn't. And that was like a long slide of losing confidence, losing clients, being confusing to everybody except my you know including myself. And now I'm at the same point, I'm like, yeah, I just want to get, I want to strive for nine hours of sleep. My borings, my workouts are extremely boring, and I just want to try to get out and enjoy my life and move and do things. But once again, if I was a coach, like, where's the money in that? And that's that's what we got to figure out is well, how do we perpetuate as an industry doing the right things that do the most good for the most people, but still make a living doing it? And that's, I don't know. When I figure that out, I'll let you know.

Yeah, we got we have to put there's a lot of great minds in this business that are doing a lot of interesting things. And how do we put how do we all put our minds together to figure out how we make these basic health and fitness practices like accessible to normal people? I think we're there's a lot of smart people in this business. I think we should be able to figure that out. So I don't know how, but I I would like to be part of it if you have ideas.

Juliet, this was awesome. I really enjoyed it. You you bring so many great perspectives and just so much authenticity to the way you you talk about it too. It's been really great. Where people want to find you online and they can just Google you. But is there any place in particular you want people to do?

Well, on my Wikipedia page. No, I'm kidding. I'm just at Juliet Starrett on Instagram. Mostly I post um pictures of Kelly dancing while he works out and a kid, so it's not that exciting. But yeah, Juliet Starr on Instagram. If anyone wants to learn more about standup kids, it's just standupkids.org. And then we're always producing tons of content on the Ready State, so at the Ready State as well.

Awesome. Juliet, thank you so much for coming on, spending your Friday afternoon or morning with me. It's been a lot of fun, and hopefully we'll get to do this again.

Thank you so much for having me. It's just a pleasure to chat about all this.

Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Juliet Starrett. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Mittness. 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, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.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.