Jenn Sherman’s COVID comments get a ride pulled.

Peloton stock sets a new record.

John Mills joins us to discuss Peloton’s search for Field Testers.

Peloton makes all sorts of little tweaks to the user interface.

Peloton releases commercial to spotlight actual users.

Echelon released a treadmill…that they also released almost a year ago.

Peloton app on Apple TV now allows multiple profiles.

Irene & Erik’s Unity rides now have English subtitles.

Selena Samuela dedicated her October 8th class to vets.

A few new pullovers quietly appeared in the boutique this week.

Matt Wilpers finally tagged Andrea Barber on Instagram.

Robin Arzon was featured on the Joe Wicks podcast.

Tunde has partnered with Optimum Nutrition Recovery.

Matty is tormenting Jess Sims on Instagram.

Aditi Shah celebrates two years with Peloton.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Jenn Sherman’s Yacht Rock Ride Removed and our interview with Jenny Westin

If we sound agitated, it’s because we just spent an hour in line to get our ballots notarized, where some of those sketchy people that are mailing ballots are there.

In Missouri, you have to get them notarized.

We sat in the drive in with what we thought would be twenty minutes. It was like 30 minutes before the line even moved. Good times. Let’s talk about something that is a good time that we’re having to do this week. You got your Bike+.

I did, and it’s beautiful. A lot of people have complained about their monitors being wobbly, and I said to the install crew, “This monitor, is it going to wobble?” They said, “You’ve got the pros here. We figured out how to tighten that thing down, so no.”

Throwing shade to all the people that delivered wobbly bikes.

They were like, “No wobble here.” It’s stable and it’s gorgeous.

Where is it going?

My old bike is going to a person who had never heard of Peloton up until two weeks ago.

She has no idea that she’s purchasing a piece of history. One day, people will track this bike down to figure out like, “Whatever happened to Clip Out Crystal’s first Peloton?”

It’s going to some lady who works in the medical field. She works here locally at a hospital that she’s a physician’s assistant, and she has not been able to work out. She’s afraid the gym is going to get closed down again because our cases are on the rise in Missouri because we don’t believe in masks here. She’s taking matters into her own hands.

Good for her. Speaking of bikes and getting them, we should mention right here, we’re giving one away. It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and to help out the National Breast Cancer Foundation, we have partnered up with them to give away a special pink Peloton. We have partnered up with the National Breast Cancer Foundation in order to give away a pink Peloton.

It is absolutely gorgeous. I can honestly say that because I am one of the only people in the world that’s seen it in person. I absolutely love it. Here’s the thing, you may be like, “I don’t need another bike,” but you probably know somebody who does. If you enter, even if you throw in $5, that’s still something. It’s going to a great cause. Every single dollar that we get over the price of the bike is going directly to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

If you want to sign up for this, you can do that at theclipout.com/pink.

Make sure you share it with your friends because we want this thing to go viral.

We have the option when you donate that you get extra entries, should you be so kind, as to share it with people, so please do. The National Breast Cancer Foundation have been rated four stars for fourteen years in a row from the Charity Navigator out.

One of the reasons they’re rated so highly is because they don’t just hoard this money. They use it specifically for people who are going through cancer. It’s a great foundation. People speak very highly of it. I know that sometimes people get a little frustrated with everything being pink this time of year, there are lots of cancers, lots of causes to give to. I absolutely understand and respect that. We did do our research though, it is a great foundation.

Over the last decade, 192,000 mammograms, 858,000 patient navigation services and over 240,000 breast health education services to women in need, those are just a few things. It’s absolutely worth your time. If you want to win a pink Peloton, go to theclipout.com/pink. What do you have in store for people?

We’re going to talk about some things about Peloton.

What a refreshing change of pace.

Let’s just jump in.

Shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure and subscribe so you’ll never miss an episode. We have a review. This is from Michelle G0313. She says, “I love my Friday mornings to listen to the new podcasts, especially now with the lockdown. Thank you both for good Peloton info and some laughs. You two crack me up. I’m glad crystal accepted my leaderboard request. I can’t wait to give you a high-five. Love the interviews with the instructors and Peloton employees. Mae is seriously my favorite. I want to be like her when I grow up. I high-five her every time I see her on a ride.”

She’s amazing and so are you. Thank you for leaving us an awesome review.

Thank you so much. Also Facebook.com/TheClipOut, while you’re there, like the page, join the group. Let’s dig in, shall we?

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There was a little controversy this week surrounding Jenn Sherman of all people.

That’s a good way to put it because I cannot think of a less controversial person, unless you’re talking about the F word, then she’s super controversial because she throws it around as much as you do.

I was going to say so much that she’s almost me.

Let me be clear. I fully support the F words, especially on a ride. I feel like it is absolutely appropriate, but that’s not what this is about. I’m going to lay out the facts, and here’s why I’m going to lay out the facts because it’s highly political and people get very upset about politics. We’re not even 30 days from the election, so I don’t want to go there. If anybody has anything negative to say to me about the election on either direction, please know I’m not going to read it or respond. What I will say is that Jenn Sherman was in the middle of an amazing shout-out for big Tom, Tom Jenkins’ 1,000th ride and Jenn Sherman was leading a Yacht Rock Ride.

This time of year, we often do the football rides, they’re getting ready to start up, but we’re not quite done. If you’re watching with us on YouTube, you can actually see footage of this ride. That is big Tom riding. He needs a higher ceiling. He’s big, he’s Tom. The point being that she’s in the middle of this amazing shout-out. You have to know that Jenn and Big Tom share a love of football. They talk about it all the time. He loves the Patriots. She loves the Eagles. They spar with each other constantly. I know this because I feel like I’ve watched their relationship over the last four years as I ride every Sunday on Football Sundays.

Anyway, so here we are in the middle of COVID and Jenn Sherman says, “I know that you’re on the bike and I know this song is for you because you love the song.” It’s Brandy, it’s his favorite Yacht Rock Song. He loves it. “Since you can’t watch your Patriots play, I give you Brandy. I’m really tired of COVID.” The exact quote was, “COVID can take down the White House, but now you’re messing with football and now COVID is really messing with us.” Some people took that to mean that was a direct slight against the White House. I personally did not take it that way.

She cares about football more than she cares about politics.

One person was so upset about it that they actually reached out to John Foley on his personal Facebook page and gave a big rant about it and how upset they were. They said that they felt like this was really politicizing Peloton and that it had taken away half of their ridership. Also, if you go and look, you can find that this person did not actually take the ride. I can only assume, and it is an assumption, I don’t have the facts that they heard about this elsewhere because a couple of people were complaining about it. They don’t want politics, but they also have a politic hashtag and it says #Trump2020. That’s the facts. His ride was then taken down. Right after that, John Foley answered on a Sunday and said, “You’re right. We’re better than this. We’re taking it down,” and there went the ride. If you didn’t take the last Yacht Rock Ride, you’re going to have to wait until next year.

A lot of people were like, “What happened to this? I was going to go take it on-demand and it just went poof.” There you have it. That ride went away but fear not, Jenn Sherman is safe.

She’s not going anywhere. John Foley loves Jenn and Jenn loves John Foley. Neither of them would do anything otherwise.

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Peloton stock just cannot be stopped. It is insane.

We’ve talked to John Mills about this several times. Here’s his theory and I know he said this before, but every time something bad happens with the Coronavirus, the stock goes up. There have been a lot of bad things with the Coronavirus this week. It’s benefiting Peloton stock. I don’t know what else to say, a high of $118.43.

The Peloton stock reminds me of the Campbell Soup stock. Campbell Soup, whenever the economy takes a rough turn, Campbell Soup stock shoots up because it’s an inexpensive form of food. If all of a sudden you see lots of people out of work or struggling to make ends meet, soup is an affordable way to get calories. A lot of people, if they’re paycheck to paycheck and struggling, they’ll pivot to soup. It seems like the way a bad economy helps Campbell Soup, COVID helps Peloton at the moment.

It does appear that is the case. There is absolutely a relationship there.

The other takeaway is that they’re both products people use when COVID isn’t bad or when the economy isn’t bad. People don’t just stop eating Campbell Soup, so when people act like, “When COVID is all fixed, people won’t want Peloton anymore.” That’s not going to be a thing.

—

Joining us is John Mills from Run, Lift and Live. Hi, John.

How’s it going?

I’m loving that stock price. We were just talking about that. How about that?

I don’t know what’s going on with that, but I’m good with it.

I hear you were out shopping for Lamborghinis today.

 

There are all kinds of stuff that keeps stopping me. I’m writing up a list now.

He’s got a coupon though for a buy one get one on Lamborghinis.

If Erica doesn’t want one, let me know.

That stock price is crazy. I’m thinking at some point it’s going to level off stop, but it’s continuing to go up.

It’s crazy.

Also this week, Peloton put out a thing looking for field testers.

Did you happen to see that? Did you get a chance to sign up for it?

I saw it, but not until you mentioned it.

You were like, “Wait a minute, let me go and look.”

Then I ran and I signed up and I thought it says in the thing that there’s going to be a limited pool so then I thought, “I may not be able to get in now. I’m late.” I guess I’m in that pool. It’s like they didn’t pull from that in the future.

They don’t really say what the limitations might be. For example, they might only want people to test in certain communities or I don’t know, I’m totally making this up, but let’s say they wanted to test a different kind of outdoor run. Maybe they only want to do that in places where it’s sunny and beautiful all the time. I don’t know.

I was looking at the criteria. There are different buckets that they had in there. They have different parts of the country, different types of workouts, different age groups, the things that you fill out when you’re doing that, I was thinking the same thing. I think it’s great for them. In the past, I would assume they had to just look in the OPMP or look through their customer list. How did they do that before? Now, they have a pool and they got all these metrics on people right from what they filled out what they like to do and they can pull from that. To me, it sounds like a win-win.

The only experience I’ve ever had similar to this is I love Panera, which is locally called St. Louis Bread Company. It’s the same thing.

It’s the St. Louis Bread Company then like, what has St. Louis gone on for? Not a whole hell of a lot. Then it becomes this big, huge thing nationwide, but they’re like, St. Louis, somebody thinks they’re going to hide a switchblade in a baguette.

I’ve got to say there, we are not making fun of anyone who lives in a place where there is violence or anything like that. We’re not making fun of anything other than the fact that St. Louis is often on the list of being the most violent in the country. That’s just a fact.

We would like something positive. People associated this with great smelling bread.

What could go wrong?

Then they changed the name?

They changed the name. I am a tester for Panera because I love Panera. Tom won’t go. He won’t eat there. He won’t go there. He doesn’t like it. He’s going to give you a thousand excuses but the bottom line is that he doesn’t like it, even when you’re not low-carbing.

When I’m not low-carbing, I want junk. Panera is like eating at a hospital cafeteria without the hospital. I don’t get the appeal. Am I wrong? You’re laughing because you’re like, “Tom, that made no sense.”

I felt in my heart the similarities between a hospital cafeteria and Panera. There was a portion of me that completely understood and agreed with what Tom was saying.

I got to try out the sandwiches and it was really cool. They took you into a room and they gave you these different sandwiches to try, then you had this little iPad in front of you and then you rated it on a billion different things. I loved it. I did not wear a gown, but because it’s COVID, I was wearing a mask except for when I was eating. They had us very separated and everybody had their own little iPad. It was very safe. I’m hoping that’s something that Peloton is going to be doing. I hope that they spread this around so that everybody gets to try it out because I love testing out new features. I am totally biased toward loving everything Peloton. I feel like this is a win-win.

They don’t want you to love everything. They want to know what the problems are. Although in all fairness, when have you ever had any difficulty pointing out where the problems are?

I do.

John’s like, “Do you guys need me for this?”

I feel like, John, you just made yourself a new GIF there.

I’m working on a couple of GIFs of you by the way. I’m going through YouTube videos, trying to find which one.

This is going to be great.

Moving on, there have been some little tweaks out there.

Earlier this week, one of our listeners who gives me information on time, she watches the app like a hawk. She pointed out to me, “On the web app, you can now skip intro.” Now, it’s on my tread too. Is it on the bike too? Is it out?

It’s not on my bike and it’s not on my tread yet either, but I see it on the web apps. I’m assuming it’s coming.

It’s pretty cool. I did a warmup run and then I skip intro and went straight into the run. I didn’t have to do an additional listen to them, tell me about what the class was going to be. It went straight into, “Let’s start warming up.” I was like, “Yes.”

That’s where that would be valuable if you were taking multiple classes. I was thinking for me, it’s normally one class. Normally, it’s 10:30 in the morning. I got a meeting at 11:00. I’ve got the 30 minutes, but I don’t want to get rid of the intro. The intro for me is the warmup and the stretch, but I know it’s not supposed to be.

They still do the warmups. When they go through the part where they’re still doing the warmup, that’s there. When they’re like, “How are you guys doing today?” That part’s gone, if you want it to be, you don’t have to. If that helps you have time to put your shoes on or whatever, then do that. No big deal.

I’m sure it’s like my competitive nature because once the clock starts, that’s not a warmup anymore. They’re warming up but I’m running. My warmup is before the clock starts.

You might want to take a warmup class and then take the other class. That’s what I did today. I had 30 minutes, so I did 10 minutes of warmup and then I just went straight into my 20. I wanted to do the one with Robin did for Alicia Keys. I wanted to take that but I was like, “I needed a little more than 20 minutes.” I wanted to get my warmup in so I could hit the ground running and I did. There are all kinds of ways to use the Peloton.

You’ve given me a way to use it now between classes.

There are all sorts of tips. It says here the bar is moving, but not barr.

I talked about this, but apparently just like John was just saying about that, what we were talking about has been rolling out. There’s always been a square right over all the instructor spaces at the end of the class. Now, it’s moved up to the top and it gives you the option where you can rate it or share it, all those things. Now, it’s not covering up the instructor space. I mentioned this and I thought everybody had it, but people are telling me this week over and over again, “Mine changed.” They they’re telling me like it’s no information because it is for them. I was like, “I guess it’s another new thing we need to get used to that Peloton is rolling out updates.” It used to that they would tell us, “There’s an update coming and it will be rolling out over the next few days.” No more. Now they’re just rolling and you hope for the best.

I remember seeing this request a few times like the Feature Fridays. I’m assuming that’s why they made this shape. I never had much of an issue with that, other than I’m constantly posting to Instagram after a ride.

That’s my thing too.

I go, “I can’t do this stuff with that thing over their face.”

I will say I didn’t have enough of an issue with it to complain about it, but now that it’s gone, I’m happy it’s gone.

Did you just call John a whiner?

No.

You said you didn’t have enough of an issue to complain about it, unlike some people.

You’re not the only one that’s called me a whiner.

I didn’t call you a whiner. Now that it’s gone, I’m super happy it’s gone. Has it changed how you’ve interacted with the end of the ride?

No, not really. I think it looks slick. It makes more sense, but it’s not really changed. Now, I just do that extra click the Rate button and I actually rate it after I clicked that.

That’s going to be the next complaint, “I have to click an extra button to go rate the instructor?”

I feel like I’m at work and I’m talking to the testing team of an app I built. You brought me to work, Crystal. Now I’m stressed out.

When you click that extra button though, just think how many more calories you’re burning. It’s probably like, “Two more calories.” You do that over the course of a year, there’s a whole extra ride you got for free. I think that’s how it works. I don’t know, I’m not good at exercise or math. None of this could be true. I don’t know.

I like it.

The reason I asked you that was because people were saying they’re already forgetting to rate the rides.

What happened to me, there are four buttons there, and the last button is user details or something. I went, “I want to test all these buttons. I’ll rate later.” The user details takes you off the ride. I guess I can’t rate it anymore.

The bike bootcamp average, this was also another little tweak.

I’ve got to say, I don’t know if this is out there for everybody yet because this just was told to me today. Stephanie Caputo, who was also on the show, she was interviewed, #BeeBetter is her leaderboard name. She said that now, whenever you do a bike bootcamp, the average doesn’t fall. Tom, during the bike portion, your output would continue to go up. Then you’d get off the bike and you’d go do the floor portion, which is the weights. While you did the weights, your average is dropping.

I can see how it will be painful for me maybe, but on the treadmill, that I didn’t happen. It stopped. I guess on the bike, it didn’t do that especially since after you’re done with the ride and sharing your experience, I like to see that average.

Your average is twenty, congrats.

I’m happy to explain. It was a bootcamp.

You’ll be Photoshopping an asterisk on there, so people know.

By the way though, my average is lower anyway. Now that I’ve got the Bike+, it’s probably going to be 20 to 30 watts.

You have a whole new experience. Have you reset your PR?

I haven’t done that yet. I’m hard-headed here. I’m over here going, “I’m going to get back those numbers, if it kills me.”

You might want to stop with the bootcamps then.

The bootcamp would have been horrible. How would I fix that? I’d be trying to lift weights and ride.

You’d be like, “Erica, come over here and pedal while I do the floor.”

They fixed it. Now, it’s frozen like it was on the treadmill.

They saved my life.

Erica would have killed you if you asked her to do that.

She would have been like, “It’s my ride now, John.”

How are you liking the Bike+?

I love it for a couple reasons. Number one, the seat is slightly closer to the handlebars. I’ve had a few back surgeries, so I really can’t do a whole like that.

That’s fascinating to me because you’re so much taller than I am, so I thought that was just a short people issue. That’s fascinating that pushing it forward also helps like every size.

I could go forward and get more power of course the further you’re over. I could do that but I can’t stay there for longer than a minute. I literally create an issue where I’ll be down for days. I’ve had to make adjustments on the bike, so that I could even do it with the distance that currently is there. Also to try to have my seat in the positions where my legs are in the appropriate position. Now having that, it’s a couple inches closer, it’s more comfortable. I like the idea that the power output is more standard. Regardless of what my numbers are, just now that I know, I can compare tha.t

I love it because my numbers pretty much stayed exactly the same. I had a hard bike and I always thought I did and now I know.

This is the crazy thing. We had two bikes and Erica would always go, “Mine is harder,” but I never really got on her bike. Now we replaced mine and I’m going, “Yes, this one’s harder. Let me try yours now.” The first time I tried hers and it’s easier than the Bike+.

Have you had the nerve to tell her that?

I haven’t really talked about that. I guess she’ll find out now when she read this. Literally, we had one bike that was easier than the standard, and another one that was harder than the standard. Mine happened to be the easier one. That wasn’t intentional. It’s still the easier one, it’s just the standard.

You have the official standard now. You’re like, “Whatever’s going on with your bike over there, whatever’s going on with your janky bike over there, mine has the official seal of approval from John Foley. You enjoy that little toy you’ve got over in the corner.” People that didn’t upgrade are going to be like, “You called now.”

We’re joking. Erica, if you do read this, we love you and we don’t really think any of these things. Blame Tom, everybody else does.

I’m trying to tell her, “We should probably get you one.” She’s like, “No, I don’t want it. I want to keep my bike.” Now I’m trying to convince her.

Because you want her to deal with the hard bike, right? That’s really the reason.

Do you really want to know for sure which one of you is better at this?

She comes out of it and she’s got the exact same bike you do and she kicks your butt. What are you going to do, John?

What’s funny about that is I took my first ride on it and we’re both riding together. She looks over at me and she’s like, “You’re breathing really hard.”

“That’s because you’re next to me, baby.” That’s the answer.

“You seem like you’re working really hard.” I spent the rest of the ride trying to act like I wasn’t working that hard.

You started throwing out some dance moves.

John, tell everybody where they can find you on the interwebs.

They can find me on Facebook at my Run, Lift and Live group, or Run, Lift and Live page. They can find me on Instagram, @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Thank you so much, John.

—

Peloton put out a new YouTube commercial.

It is their very first ad featuring all real community members. They are members of the community. Have you gotten to see this thing?

I have not.

It is fabulous. It features different members that are in their homes. They’re being filmed in their natural state. These are actually people who really use the Peloton.

Which is what we said a few years back that you have all these people that love their Peloton, why not make a spot with them instead of trying to find actors to retell these kind of stories?

I love how they featured their leaderboard names and they featured in their environment, why their leaderboard name is special. For the very first one, #Grandpop73, he’s hanging out with his granddaughter. Then you have #SeanBeforeDawn, and his hashtag is #vets and he’s in his military fatigues, you can see. Then there’s one that was for an Esquire. She’s a lawyer and she’s in the Black Girl Magic group and she’s sitting in a desk, obviously being a lawyer. She’s got her Peloton leggings on. It’s all these little touches that are perfect. It’s a great commercial. If you haven’t seen it, absolutely check it out. It is my favorite that they have done ever. The #LadyNeedCake, she’s in the Pelo Foodies group. You do need cakes. She’s funny because they have her eating cake mix out of a cake bowl. I feel it.

—

Echelon, you’re so crazy.

That’s what our bumper should be. We should have a new one made that just says, “Oh Echelon.”

Then it’s sad trombone. Their newest antics, they released a tread called Stride. I will say something positive about Echelon. I like that name. Someone’s mad at me now.

I’m not mad at you. I could give less about anything Echelon does or being positive about it. These people are so into business for the wrong thing. I’m all about making money, don’t get me wrong. Could you be innovative at all? I will give them this as positive as I can possibly be. This treadmill looks nothing like the Peloton treadmill. It’s not even trying to be. From what I can tell, it just happened to come out and I’m sure next thing you know, they’re going to be doing bootcamps and everything that Peloton does. Here’s the thing. That is a knockoff. It’s a weird antic. Back in January of 2020 in CES. they launched this with the Rower. Now, they came out with a press release saying, “Launching our treadmill.”

That they launched months ago.

I apologize because we probably should have talked about this with John Mills, I forgot. He brought that particular point on Run, Lift and Live, and I totally forgot when we were putting the notes together. That credit goes to John Mills. Can you believe it? They relaunched a product months later and pretend that it’s brand new. Echelon, that’s who does that.

Netflix’s Cobra Kai.

Update, Cobra Kai, for all of you that said we needed to watch it because it was so good. It is so freaking good. Moving on.

I guess while we’re talking about competitors, we can now label them one, Apple.

We can, but that’s not what this is. This actually should have been under New Features. What this is saying is the Peloton app on Apple TV, and in my head I knew that it was the Peloton app because this is about Peloton, I put a shorthand in. My notes were not clear. The whole point of this is to tell you that Apple TV now can use multi-user support. Before this update was done, when you had Apple TV and you were using the Peloton app, you had to log all the way out and then log back in with a completely different user, then log back into your Apple TV. You could not just switch from profile to profile, and now you can.

That’s a nice feature. I know that I don’t care about this, but when HBO Max or Spotify where you can toggle back and forth, because it takes long to log in and out on your TV.

It’s a huge time saver. I love it. We don’t have the Apple TV. For anybody out there, we’re not getting one. We have enough TV things. I know that I’m dipping my toes in the Apple water, but we’re not doing that. I do love my Mac.

—

If you’re looking to take Irène and Erik’s Unity Ride, they now have English subtitles.

Also, you get a special badge when you take both. For all you badge-whores, go get it. It’s a loving term.

 

You could have called them badgers.

I could have, but we call ourselves badge-whores, #badgewhore.

Put that on your leaderboard.

I’m sure it’s out there.

Selena Samuela dedicated her bootcamp ride from October 8th to veterans, #vets.

I think this is great. I can clearly see the writing on the wall. We’re going to be seeing more of this very personalized. Hashtags aren’t all that old. This one, what happened was they took any of the hashtags that are vets. It’s #vets. A letter went out to every single person who uses that hashtag from Selena. She told a little bit of a story about how her dad was in the military and she was in the military. I hope I have those details correct. I read it and it was incredibly touching. The part that was touching to me was that she’s dedicating this boot camp and it’s on the tread. She asked for everybody who’s in the military and veteran community to come out and make sure that they had the #vets on their profile. Jacqui Cincotta sent this to us. I know a lot of our readers know as well, Jacqui is a vet and very proud to be. We’re proud of her.

She was featured on an episode, one of our early interviews.

She was in episode eight.

A few pullovers popped up in the boutique out of the blue.

There was a tank top and a sweatshirt and then a couple of other shirts. I’ve had several people ask me why. I don’t know. I got nothing. I’m feeling like they were late arrivals for fall.

Their vendor shipped them UPS ground instead of overnight air.

It’s such a weird time with suppliers now. Honestly, it could be anything. It could be stuff that’s old and never made it to when it was supposed to be out like in spring. They were just like, “Let’s go ahead and use it now.” I really don’t know but enjoy.

—

People might remember our Andrea Barber interview. If you haven’t listened to it, you should probably go check it out because people seem to enjoy it immensely.

You will get a good ab workout from laughing.

She was delightful. You might recall from the interview that she’s a big Matt Wilpers fan. He’s no Joey McIntyre, but he’s okay. She was like, “I can’t get Matt to pay attention to me on the Instagram.” Matt Wilpers finally tagged her on Instagram.

He was like, “You got this, Andrea,” and had her in his story. Hopefully she saw it. I feel like she probably did. Andrea, if you’re out there, let us know if you saw it. Matt Wilpers, thank goodness, you finally tagged her. That’s amazing. I know you made her Peloton dreams come true.

Thanks for listening, Matt.

I know it was a little presumptuous.

He might have heard about it somewhere.

I don’t know, people were tagging him left and right.

I’m going to assume he listened.

—

Robin Arzon was featured on a podcast, The Joe Wicks Podcast.

I just took a run with her. She’s doing great, baby bump, happy. I don’t know when this was recorded, but the episode aired on August 10th 2020. It’s been a little bit. Somebody pointed it out, but we might’ve missed it. Maybe I even talked about it, I just don’t remember. It’s called Robin Arzon Sweating with Swagger. It looks like it’s a British podcast because it through the BBC.

It says BBC Radio 4 in the little icon there.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to check it out, please do so because Robin always has very interesting things to say. By the way, if you haven’t taken that Alicia Keys run, for anybody else out there who’s on the fence about taking it because Alicia Keys is a little more of a down tempo thing. You need to take it and save it for a day that you’re feeling down and the world sucks. When you’re feeling like that, that’s the perfect time to take that run. It’s awesome. There might be a little tearing up.

Tunde has partnered with Optimum Nutrition Recovery.

It’s a little bit different than Optimus Prime, but technically it can transform you. It’s all about different recovery products. She is going to be sending protein pancake recipes our way. Anytime you have pancakes in the mix, I am all in. Plus, I love Tunde. She’s great. Go out there and buy some Optimum stuff.

Matty Maggiacomo has been tormenting Jess Sims. He likes to scare her around Halloween time.

Last year 2019 was pretty epic. If you weren’t around last year, if you’re new to Peloton, you need to go back and look up their Stories. I’m pretty sure it’s probably on their highlights. If it’s not, reach out to me, it’s freaking hilarious what they did. It was Becs and Matty both got Jess Sims. He’s doing a countdown this year. Every day on Instagram, on his Stories, he posts a different picture of him doing something Halloween-y. Matty was standing in front of the fridge and he had a picture. It was one of those filters and it showed a picture of a creepy head inside his fridge. He’s just hanging out next to his fridge. Then he’ll put like, I don’t remember how many days it was on that day, but it would be like, “Thirteen days to go.”

He’s got something brewing for Jess Sims.

Watch out, Jess. I know you’re going to love it and hate it.

It’s bad if he’s not even hiding the fact that it’s coming.

That’s going to be the kind that you brace yourself for all day and it happens at home. It’s going to be something super unexpected. Except if you count down to the exact day, he’s got that going. I don’t know, but hang in there, Jess.

—

There are no birthdays this week, but Aditi Shah is celebrating two years at Peloton.

Congratulations to Aditi. It’s hard to believe we’ve revamped the yoga program that’s been going on for that long. I really love especially her meditations. They’re fabulous. Thank you for joining us, Aditi. We’re very happy to have you in the family.

If you want to swing by theclipout.com and search on her name, we wrote an interesting little piece about her not too long ago, about her acting career prior to Peloton. She was on Elementary on CBS. She was on the HBO show. She was on an episode of Inside Amy Schumer. She pops up in a couple of things and we have screen grabs and stuff there, which is pretty nifty.

It’s a fun article. Definitely check that out.

—

Joining us is Jenny Westin. Jenny, how’s it going?

It’s nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

You are in New York City. What is that like for those of us in flyover country?

I am. It’s wild. I’ve lived in New York for several years. My husband and I live in about 500 square feet. It’s tiny in a normal life. You always say about New Yorkers, we don’t have dinner parties unless you’re living in a gorgeous townhouse or you’re a real housewife and you’re not having people over. You meet elsewhere. Your home is your safe, cozy place. My husband has lived here since the ‘90s. It is rent-stabilized.

You’re like, “We are not leaving.”

We will never leave. It’s not one of those unicorns that’s $53 a month, but it’s still pretty much a unicorn. It is in Greenwich Village, which for me is the best neighborhood. You have a two-minute walk to Soho, a two-minute walk to Washington Square Park. There’s so much culture. We’re right near NYU. My husband, we won’t call him a hoarder, that’s not the right word. He’s a lover of nostalgia.

What kind of nostalgia? What branch?

All kinds. Mostly in the superheroes, Legos, Comic-Con, Universal, Monsters. When I came here for the first time, he was worried that I wouldn’t like it because he would wallpaper the walls with old newspaper clips. It was his man cave and he lived here. It has evolved quite a bit, but he did not think the apartment would be a selling point. He thought that it could be a deal-breaker. This room is the only light in the apartment. He’s like, “I live in a cave over there. You can have the light.” My Peloton is right here. This is my everything space and I’m looking at my closet too.

When we talk about how Peloton is coming out with the new tread, with a smaller footprint. We discuss why that’s important for certain parts of the country. I’m sure as soon as you saw the first tread, you’re like, “Non-starter.” It’s 10% of your living space.

 

The bike for us was almost a non-starter.

That makes sense when you have to squeeze everything in like that.

I was relentless. We are spirit animals, all four of us together because he is not a workout aficionado.

When you explained what his interests were, I painted with a broad brush. It’s not stereotyping if it involves marketing. That’s what I tell myself at work all the time.

The man loves his scenic ride. That’s the best way to describe his Peloton experience. He’s taken to it completely.

I too love a scenic ride when she’s on the bike.

I did boot camp and he said, “What are you doing?” You’re meant to do that. For us, space was the number one concern. I said, “Can it go in the kitchen? Can it go in this teeny tiny hallway?” He thinks that I have no realistic vision of space. We will go to Crate & Barrel and I’ll say, “Look at that chair.” He’s like, “Jenny, that chair will take up the entire living room.” He is always one step behind with a tape measure to give me a little bit of reality.

It’s a different set of problems from what we have. We have all the space here in Missouri. You guys have lots of cool stuff that you have access to all the time. It’s a good trade-off.

I’m loving your movie posters. We can’t even figure out where our wedding photos are going to go. We’re like, “Do we have real estate on the wall for that?”

I would think you would use lots of digital frames that could scroll through photos so you could maximize them.

A normal person would say that. In my household, that would be a little bit sacrilege like an eReader. It’s like, “No. You need a book.”

He’s old-school. He has to have the tactile sensation of a book.

DVDs.

You don’t have enough space for that. Where does he put it all? Do you have a storage unit?

We do have a storage unit. We get smart. I like to think we’re smart. HGTV came in here and they would say, “Wow.” Creative is probably the right word. We had DVDs lining the kitchen ceiling. Not the ceiling, but right below. At the beginning of 2020, he said, “My project is to get rid of the DVD boxes.” He has what I had in my car in high school, a zippered CD holder. We have about six of them. He can never find the DVDs he’s looking for. They used to be alphabetized. These are growing pains. These are good problems to have.

I’m a big fan of Vudu. I’ve gotten away from physical media. I have 800 or 900 movies on Vudu. If you watch their sales, it will be on sale for $5.

What we do is he searches for twenty minutes, he gets frustrated, and then I say, “Why don’t we purchase it?” which we ended up doing.

You’re purchasing on streaming?

Of course.

This is smart. You’re going to slowly edge him out. You’ll have him on an eReader in no time.

What you need to do is go through and create a separate book. Every time you buy one, go through and find it and then quietly put it in the get rid of pile.

That’s brilliant. There are also five copies of each because physically they get lost at some point.

The reason he’s got five copies of each is because they put it out originally and you buy it and then there’s the tenth-anniversary edition. There are all these special features. There’s director’s commentary. If you buy Spinal Tap on the first pressing on DVD, it has the three actors as the actors do in this commentary. If you buy the other one, it’s got them in character as Spinal Tap during the commentary.

I am dying that that’s the movie you called out because that’s my number one movie. We’ve been together for several years and it’s a masterclass. We watched Terminator. I’ve never seen Terminator. It’s sad for me. I have a lot of thoughts for a different place and a different time. Spinal Tap is the one movie that he’s shown me like Citizen Kane. I hadn’t seen a lot of Hitchcock and things like that. I did not like Spinal Tap. I’m going to rewatch it. I am a Curb Your Enthusiasm type comedy fan. I’m happily and heavily amused. If you want me to laugh, I’m not going to laugh. Stand-up comedy makes me nervous.

Imagine how the comics feel?

I’m almost more uncomfortable sitting there. Spinal Tap is the number one thing. We constantly are joking about quotes and things like that. It’s become part of our existence. I did promise to him that we could watch it.

We watched it not too long ago with my son. He loves classic rock, on his own, I did not foist it upon him. He stumbled on it by accident and fell in love. I was like, “He’s going to dig this.” He was like, “It was okay.” One, if you saw it at a certain age, it resonates with you because that was of the moment. Also, they did a good job of what we would refer to in the comic book movie world as world-building. It feels like a lived-in place. It’s a good hangout movie. You feel like you’re hanging out with these people. You get drawn in this world and then you start to gravitate to these little lines that are sometimes funnier the 4th or 5th time you heard them than they are the first time you heard them. When you sit down with somebody who’s fresh and they’re coming up to this great line and you’re thinking, “This is a great line.” You’ll realize, “That doesn’t necessarily land with the same punch.” The longer you sit with that line, the funnier it becomes. A more accessible version would be, “Be the ball, Danny,” from Caddyshack. Caddyshack has a lot of lines.

An unpopular opinion is that’s how I feel about Napoleon Dynamite. If other people quote Napoleon Dynamite, I laugh. I watch it, I got nothing.

It takes time.

They built a unique world.

It has this escape at its absolute finest. You were in that movie.

I never got there. Maybe I need to watch it again.

Spinal Tap, I feel I can get there. There’s one quote and I’m probably going to butcher it. It’s like, “We didn’t know who they were or what they were doing.” There are these funny moments and he’s like, “See?” I said, “Maybe I wasn’t in the headspace.” I have to say, early on in our relationship, he tried to show me Mystery Science Theater and I felt the exact same way. Now, I demand we watch it. We DVR them. I sing the song. I get mad if it’s not an original. I am all in it. You have to become part of the ecosystem and suspend reality and enjoy it.

I’m a huge MST3K fan. We visited the set when they were relaunching it for Netflix. Joel was a guest on my other podcast once. He was nice when he came on.

Is he lovely?

He’s nice. Whenever they come to town, he always is great about letting Crystal and I come back and say hi and we bring the kids. We’ve done things with Frank and Trace. They have their own little side thing that they do. They came to town and I bought the show and promoted it because they needed a place to play. I’m better friends with that original cast. Most people would think of us as the RiffTrax stuff, Mike and Bill Corbett.

That’s how I feel. It’s like, “Where is Joel?” I’m obsessed with the song.

I like that Mike wins a lot.

That’s what Erik says too. If it’s not Joel and I can tell that the intro song is going that way, I’m like, “Ugh.” Erik is like, “Show Mike some respect.”

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is one of their best episodes. That’s such a good one. That’s the first Mike one.

We watch Svengoolie also. He’s based in Chicago. I had no idea what Svengoolie was. Every Saturday night it’s on in the background and there’s an old black and white horror movie and somehow, it’s Zen. We always joke like, “It’s not precious.” Terminator was precious. We’re both a talker. We’ve been together for years. I don’t think there’s been a moment of silence in that entire time. I was like, “Wait a minute.” He’s like, “Watch it.” I’m used to hearing the full Wikipedia rundown. He was like, “You’ll get it. It will be okay.”

There are some movies that you’re like, “I’ll explain it to you on the fly.” There are other movies where you’re like, “You need to experience this.” At some point, this turned into an episode of Real Spoilers and people are probably like, “What is going on?”

“Did we accidentally click on the wrong podcast?”

When did this go from being Crystal and Tom’s podcast to Tom and Crystal’s podcast?

A Peloton question, how did you originally find Peloton?

What’s funny is I’ve only been part of the Peloton community since late February.

You’re right there in New York, how is that possible?

I feel like I’m the new kid on the block.

You snuck it in under the COVID wire.

Am I a psycho?

Yeah.

There were three things that happened. I cleaned like a lunatic. If we were going to bring this Peloton in here, I had to know where all my stuff was and not to be trying to creep around and all that stuff. I cleaned like crazy. We got rid of the DVDs. That was good. The boxes, not the CDs. We ordered the Peloton. What I would say is when you live in New York, you have every boutique fitness class that you could possibly imagine at your disposal. You spend a gazillion dollars. I have been personally on a wellness journey. I’ve lost 80 pounds. I always joke like, “I’m not unathletic. I’m just not in shape.” Part of my process starting in 2018 was, what am I going to like? I know that, for me, going to the gym and having a routine isn’t it. I know that. I went to SoulCycle a lot and I went to 305 Fitness, which is a cardio dance-based activity where you pretty much twerk.

That’s the difference between New York and the Midwest. In St. Louis, we still have Vic Tanny.

We also have Zumba, it’s definitely a thing here.

305 Fitness was founded in Miami and it is sexy Zumba, that’s what it is. I remember going into that class and standing in the back and slowly moving to the front and building that confidence. When that happened, I started going to more spinning classes and I went to all of them. I never went into Peloton and it was because I had a little intimidation of, “Could I be on that screen? Will I look crazy?” One of the major things I’ve learned about myself is the amount of wasted energy I would spend going into a class and looking around and comparing myself and like, “Why am I not going as fast as that person? Why does she look good in that outfit? What am I doing wrong?” After two years of doing everything, I said, “I love cycling, but I’m not consistent enough with it to make it a discipline.” I love Pilates. I took one many Ubers and ten minutes too late and walked into one many dark pack cycling studios and I said, “I am not doing this anymore.”

If I’m up at 6:00, which never happens, and I want to go work out, I want it to be right there. When you’re getting married, you’ll spend as much money as humanly possible to do whatever to yourself is right. Finally, I said to Erik, “We can fit it in my dressing room.” The biggest thing was, he works down in the financial district. I said, “Why don’t we meet?” It’s an indoor mall called Brookfield Place. I said, “Let’s go to the showroom.” I knew well we were going into that showroom and we’re buying that bike. He knew we were going in to look at it and I was like, “No.” He knows me enough. I like to shop and then I will start talking to the people that are there and making friends with them. We got the bike, which completely psychic, completely grateful and blessed, and all the things.

Think how much money you saved him there because if you tried to buy one, you’d either be on a waiting list or you had to go to the black market like Radar or O’Reilly.

It would have been emotional warfare because every fifteen minutes, I would have said, “Remember what I wanted to get?”

You were locked in the house.

We live in a fifth-floor walk-up. I get a little bit of a booty workout. Trust me, when you get up here, you’re not leaving again.

You don’t have to be motivated to leave. You’ve got to be motivated to come back.

We have everything delivered. We were joking, you guys have your experience and we have ours. That’s the one thing, I can get anything on earth delivered here in under an hour, which is not good either. I could have one of the best steaks in the entire world delivered here. Everything can be brought here. During the early stages of quarantine, New Yorkers took it seriously. Sadly, I knew a number of people who lost parents and friends. Everyone has an opinion on New Yorkers. New Yorkers take care of each other, that’s the number one thing. We were out the window and banging pots and pans every single night at 7:00. We wanted to do everything in our power to not expose ourselves or hurt anybody else. We did not leave our apartments until early June of 2020. For three months, we were in 500 square feet.

Day one, being home from the office and I texted all my accountability buddies, about two of which have Peloton bikes and I said, “This will be my kryptonite. I know myself. With no movement and the overwhelming emotional and mental stress of the situation and the uncertainty of it, we’ve got to get something going.” I love Instagram. I love the visual. It’s light. It’s not as heavy as Facebook to me. I’m with Robin Arzon. I want to proud brag. I don’t want to humblebrag. You can put things out there you like. I immediately started this group and I thought about what it would be named. I couldn’t think of anything that good. It was Stay Home Stay Motivated, because that’s what I needed. I wish it had a better acronym because I can’t even say it most of the time. It’s SHSM. It’s a little tongue twister. I can’t even say it. I tried to shorten it.

It was about ten people I knew who either had been through wellness journeys before or in the midst of one and they said, “I can’t.” They knew themselves enough, or the couple of people I knew who had had Pelotons and been evangelists and said, “Let’s ride together.” I felt I was coming into this community and I didn’t know anything. I didn’t have a mentor either. My best friend, Caitlin, peer pressured me to get it, and then she left her apartment without a bike. She’s like, “Look at you. I made you get this bike and I haven’t been on mine in three months.” I felt a little rudderless in the ecosystem but excited and that’s how it started.

 

Stay Home Stay Motivated started with ten people. How many people are part of your group?

We’re about 5,400. It doesn’t feel real in many ways but it is.

Are you guys on Facebook too or just Instagram?

We’re not on Facebook. We like to say that we prefer our sparkly Instagram bubble.

It is different over in Instagram.

I don’t get asked too often, but people who do get into the community aspect of Facebook, they would love it. I’m a team of one. I also want it to feel as inclusive and happy and proud as possible. I don’t know that I could moderate at the level that would need to be moderated. We intend to stay in our Instagram bubble, but it is a question I do get asked.

Being on Instagram is different from being on Facebook, from the interaction standpoint. If you want to have a conversation on Facebook, it’s easy to do. You start a thread and everybody can join in. On Instagram, you have to make a post to do it or comment on somebody else’s posts. Clearly, whatever you’re doing is working. I don’t understand how you keep it engaging. How do you keep those people talking to each other?

For me, I work in employee engagement and corporate communications, but I don’t do social media professionally. For me, I like to think of myself as savvy. I try to figure it out. I have seen a shift of a lot of people who are setting up Instagram for the first time or they are setting up an Instagram for weight loss or for fitness. They want to be able to share and talk about it as much as possible without, in their mind, irritating everybody that they know. It comes down to the sharing aspects of it. To me, we’re a community. We post about 7 to 10 times a day. The post volume is quite high.

What I like to do to start the day is always start with a quote, either from an instructor, so they are amazing talents, I take from them all the time or some words that, for me, are particularly appealing. The day starts that way. What I always see is that people, as they work out through the day, they share the quote and they comment. Instagram Stories, I get tagged in hundreds of stories a day. This was even before the new Peloton feature where you could share that sexy little video, Cody Rigsby would be dancing.

I know it’s frustrating for a lot of people. For most people, what they have come to do is do the proud brag. They want to show, “I did this ride. I did this workout.” That is where the interaction comes from. It’s funny when I think back about how we started. I had no Peloton friends. I was a loser. I was like, “My two friends aren’t working out. I’ll go on my own.” As people started to join us, I was adding every single person as a friend until I broke the follow limit. I was following 2,000 people in Peloton and I was like, “I can’t add anyone.” I said, “No one follows that many people.” The hashtags came. That has been such a game-changer for us.

The whole aspect of it in the beginning was, I want to be able to associate what your Instagram name is with what your Peloton name is. It started as one post where people would comment and they’d say, “I’m JadoreNewYorkXO,” which is me in real life. My leaderboard name is JennyGoesBiking. We had a running thing of comments and then that got too many. We have a Google Sheet with over 3,000 Peloton riders, which is awesome. I’m a data nerd. I manage it. If you notice that somebody within our hashtag is always riding right near you, you can look up and connect with them. For me, I found it most interesting when I noticed people knew themselves each other in real life because nobody was together in real life. They say, “Yes, she’s my sister.” I’m like, “Oh.” Now it’s legit friendships, which have been forged in fire for the rest of time. That started because they were chasing each other on the leaderboard.

That’s what Peloton is all about. I love that it can bring many people together. That’s unique about what you’re doing because there are one million Facebook groups but there are not a lot of Instagram groups. I’m not saying that there are not a lot of people that love Peloton that post on Instagram because there are. There’s not a lot of cohesion to those people. That’s cool and unique about what you’re doing.

Thank you. When we started, we were small. There would be ten people on a live ride. What I started doing from the account was, let’s say I took a Robin ride and she has all her nuggets of genius. I quickly would put together a Word Art of a picture of her and a quote and then I would tag every person in my story that had been in that class. It was ten people and then it was 40 people and that was still okay. I needed four quotes. Most people don’t realize this, you can only tag ten people in a story. When it got too popular, I was like, “This isn’t sustainable.” People were constantly resharing that, a pride that they took the ride together. That was incredibly helpful. When people started to notice that they were on the same ride as other people, they would start to connect through their DMs. Most of this started from a selfish place.

I’m going to correct you on that. It’s not selfish. You started with what you needed. It happened to be what other people needed to.

I love that so much. That’s exactly what I mean to say. I tried to get through Crush Your Core with Emma Lovewell, because I want to look like Emma Lovewell. She is a mermaid of a human. Not knowing or being as familiar with the platform, I said, “There’s this program. I’m going to do it.” I got through the first week, maybe once. I may be tried four times. I’m a motivated and hard-headed person. I was like, “I’m not getting through it.” What I started to do is make these challenge templates. We started with Emma. I do think there was one before that, but we’ll talk about Emma because it’s more exciting. I had a tracker and it was one sheet, straightforward and you would put a GIF. Trust me, there are some funny GIFs. There is a GIF of a banana trying to do a sit up. He struggles like the rest of us. A lot of people like to use him. People would start sharing as they checked off the days. I wasn’t curating anything, but it was an opportunity to socially share your progress. Through that, there’s a little bit of shared peer pressure and I’ve done it three times.

I saw some of the templates that you sent me as examples. They are pretty. They’re well done.

Thank you.

How do you design those? Are you using Canva or something?

I use Word Swag for those things in the grid. There’s a design software called Visme that I use a lot both personally and professionally for infographics. What I started to do was use that and I said, “It looks slick and it’s simple.” For me, I always think about the visual aspect and I’m like, “I want this to have credibility.” Tunde is a great example. We’ve done two Tunde arm programs, which are torture but also magic. I said, “If I’m going to put something out with this person’s name on it, it needs to have a level of credibility of course.” I’ve sent it to Tunde and she loves it, and she comments on people’s progress. That was a situation in which I said, “We’ve done the programs that people are associated with. Now, I’m going to start curating some programs myself.” Tunde’s arms, as we know, are a little scary.

Those are arm goals. It’s the best.

I, throughout the early stages of being at home, worked out with my four best friends on Zoom twice a day for the first month or two. These are my best friends from childhood, my bridesmaids at my wedding, and my besties. One day, I said, “I can’t join you. I’m busy animating, but do this Tunde arm class.” I got more texts over the next three days. What was that? They were all using the free trial. Many people were getting exposure. They said, “I can’t believe you sent that to us and then did not join,” but then on day four, they said, “Let’s do Tunde again.”

It’s effective. It’s painful, but it’s working.

She liked that it’s not cute but it’s effective, and that’s what it is. This was just a lightbulb. I said, “I know what I need.” She happened to have, at the time, three ten-minute classes or something. I said, “Great.” She says, “These are designed to take 2 to 3 times a week. I will make a template and I will say, ‘On week one, you take this. On week two, you take this.’” I called it Tone Those Arms with Tunde. Now we have the original and we did a number two. There are ways to help the group navigate a little bit, which I still find myself trying to do but you can curate these things together yourself but that takes a level of time and discipline, so I try to do it for people.

People get overwhelmed. If somebody does it for you, you’re taking a step out of it. We’re such creatures of like, “Give us an excuse we won’t do it.” If you take the excuse of and you’re like, “It’s how I feel about Tonal and Peloton.” If somebody tells me what to do, I get on the bike or I get on the treadmill or do this, okay. If you make me think about it, I’m out.

That’s what my husband says about the scenic rides. He has such incredible discipline. He’s like, “After each minute, I go up to ten more.” I’m like, “What?” I said, “I need the love of my life, Cody Rigsby, to be telling me what to be doing.” That’s what’s amazing about the program. When I was going to talk to you, I’m like, “Let me think about my journey a little because it hasn’t been that long.” It feels like it has been a long time. We all feel that 2020 has been a long time. I’ve done 350 rides because I wasn’t moving. It was the only thing that was getting my legs to do something. I said to myself, “I can grab a couple 2 or 3-pound weights and do an arm routine, but with the exception of a short core program, I’m not doing strength in my house.”

I know I’m not doing it and that is a bit of a barrier for entry for people. You have Tonal for example. I know a couple of friends who have that as well and it’s like, “The gym is right there.” Not only have weights been hard to find. People on Craigslist are trying to sell them for $500. I’m like, “You got that at Target.” What I realized is people want to do strength but they have every excuse to not do it. I keep staring. I have what is probably a 7×4 foot area in which I conduct myself. For yoga and strength, I bought a meditation pillow. I said, “I’m going to curate what we call the Strengths of Palooza in one strength class a day for two weeks.”

What’s beautiful about that is you’re getting exposure to different instructors, which we have learned through Peloton and other things that people love getting out of their comfort zone and say, “I never took anything with Jess Sims.” The second you take anything with Jess Sims, you’re obsessed with her. I keep saying you widen your aperture. You all of a sudden are like, “I could do that.” People now are saying, “I didn’t realize that the weight classes or the strength classes could be this effortless in my life.” It takes somebody to say, “I’m going to curate this for you, and I’m going to hand it to you and you don’t have to do a thing but do it.”

We’ve heard lots of rumors about things that Peloton is doing and we know something’s coming with strength. We know they’re working on strength. I can’t help but wonder if they are working on ways to curate more programs to bring more of that together because that’s a missing piece for people. That’s great that you are doing that for your people. That is a missing thing and people clearly love it, but you can’t serve one million people.

It is far larger than I thought it would be at this point or maybe ever. Our number one superpower at Stay Home Stay Motivated was people feel seen and I never will compromise that. I shout out the milestones. The best thing when you run a community platform is to curate your content from all of your members’ content. I have this thing, #SHSMInTheWild. I love seeing somebody in a kayak. I didn’t have the confidence before Peloton to think I could do that physically, so it bleeds out into the other areas of the world. What was interesting for me was the Peloton experience because that’s when we saw a lot of growth. Because the hashtags were popular, we sold apparel as well. We don’t do it for profit. I threw some hashtags on a t-shirt and there was nothing Peloton so I could do it so people felt togetherness. That’s when I started seeing the dreaded comments, which I imagine you get a lot of.

People were like, “This is too hard. I don’t know how to do this.” I was trying to break it down simply because I didn’t want people to feel intimidated, but I was seeing such an influx of new folks. That’s when I started to realize, “Peloton job is not easy.” Number one, I have such overwhelming respect for their tech team for how they’ve been able to scale the number of classes being taken, the workout at home, and the number of new users. These people are still customers and they have needs.

I started to see a lot of buzzes. People are like, I want to be able to do boot camp on my bike.” In my mind, I say, “I’m going to do boot camp on my bike. I’m sure to do it.” I did my third Saturday 60 and I love it. I know about 10 or 15 people that said, “I’m going to try that too.” That’s what is such a good example for people as they start to branch out and say, “This equipment is at my disposal and I’m going to get a little creative too.” Peloton understands what people are looking for.

Peloton is people’s life hack. They realize, “If they want it bad enough to do that, then we need to figure out ways to bring that in and bake it into what we do.”

One consistent thing I’ve seen about Peloton and how they make decisions is always numbers. They’re always looking at what is the thing people keep asking for the most and they’ve been consistent about that. They’re metrics-driven more than any other company I’ve ever seen because they will pivot and make that change. Whereas a lot of companies, they’re not flexible and nimble enough to make that change. The thing is, though, that the larger the community gets, the more diverse ideas that you get, and the more diversity of how people think it “should be.” Everybody has strong opinions about that.

When I was getting many questions about these t-shirts, I was like, “I’m trying to make this as simple and quick as possible.” At one point, I said, “I am not the Gap.” I was like, “Even if I were the Gap, you’re never going to make everyone happy.” I often use this analogy. I don’t know if it resonates with anyone in the world, but I’ve been using it for years. If I go into the CVS and I want a beverage. I am completely thirsty and I go to the beverage refrigerator and there are 9,000 sodas, it’s too much. I don’t need to see all those sodas. I want to go to Rose Apothecary in Schitt’s Creek and I want them to tell me like, “These are the three best drinks on Earth,” and I want to take it.

It’s what economists refer to as the paradox of choice.

That’s exactly what it is. I feel that way about community building too. We at Stay Home Stay Motivated, tons of our members are in the other squads. They’re in the Boo Crew. They’re in the Love Squad. Everyone’s in Adrian Squad. Everyone will follow Adrian. It’s a way to display your pride, but do you feel seen in that community? Maybe not. This was a way of saying even with 5,000, I would argue we could probably get five times as big and still keep because the individual connections are going on and we could still keep that feeling. People, at some point, need to have that connectivity.

When people feel connected and they feel seen, they don’t think about the features that they don’t have because they’re focused on what their experience is like. I have found people who potentially at first, we’re doing a lot of dry comments on the functionality or how difficult things are. As soon as you start to see that they’ve connected with 2 or 3 people in their age group and region, the tone changes. Are you still frustrated? Totally. Can these communities pivot people’s experience a little bit?

The communities have always filled a need. It’s worked side by side with Peloton. The communities have fueled Peloton and Peloton has fueled the communities because they keep growing. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Once they get too big, they’re not as effective and they get toxic. There are a few people that speak up and push everybody out. I like the idea of it being on Instagram because you automatically control the chatter in a way you don’t control it on Facebook. It’s harder.

It’s my entire quarantine project. It’s my special thing. When I look back, I’m like, “That’s what I did and I didn’t get on my way back. My arms are looking better than ever. I survived with my husband in 500 square feet and loved him more than ever.” Maybe I’ll start to like Spinal Tap, Tom. What I can honestly say is there have been under ten comments the entire time that I’ve had to delete or respond to. I’m going to share an example with you that epitomizes this experience. There’s a woman that I have become friendly with on the platform and she’s a beast on the mic. I see the app and I’m like, “That is good for you. Blow it, but that’s fine.” There’s something to it like, “I don’t feel as competitive. I feel competitive with myself.” I know that’s a philosophy, but it’s true. She went on Facebook and posted on something she would normally post on her Instagram, which was, “Look at my output. I’m proud of working towards this.” It’s almost a sociology experiment. This was a final exam in your Sociology 101 class. She put it on Facebook.

Is this her personal account or did she put it on the OPP?

She put it on her personal account, which is a little safer. I had to deactivate my mind. I said, “I’m done with this.” I have a shady one for business purposes only.

Was this on her page or did she put it on another page?

She put it on her personal page, which shouldn’t be a little bit of a safety zone if you have your white-picket-fence but we all know Facebook can be quite toxic, then she put it on her Instagram page. She has a ton of Peloton followers. Everyone on Facebook started to question her. “There’s no way your output is that high. You need to call Peloton and get your bike calibrated. What are you doing?” You could tell the tone. “There is no way you’re doing what the instructor says. What are you doing? Are your legs getting big?” All this stuff and she was like, “Excuse me?”

 

We all know that no matter how popular you are, critique does not feel good and it spins around for a couple of days. Months later she’s like, “I called Peloton. I made sure my bike was right.” She felt the need to question herself. Meanwhile, she goes on Instagram and posts the same thing to a lot of dedicated Peloton Instagram accounts. Nothing but complete and utter support, shock and awe, and people shared it. People have become fluent in openly sharing their Instagram Stories because 24 hours is fine. It goes away. They said, “Look at this. This is amazing.” That is the perfect example of how we’ve chosen to stay on the Instagram platform.

I wish the people on Facebook would devote that degree of skepticism to news.

I don’t even think it’s ten comments. Maybe five and I had to delete it. I have a saved message that for me has a little bite like, “Goodbye. Girl, bye. Boy, bye.” If you’re new to this community, this is not how we operate. I found that our community was incredibly diverse organically and people were running for causes that meant a lot to them, whether it be Black Lives Matter or a number of different causes. People had to feel safe to share that information. I have said, “You have my word no matter what but if I see anything, it will not be tolerated.”

You worry at first like, “If I post one thing, some people think it’s not right.” You have to come to the philosophy of, you don’t please everybody. I’m a huge Hamilton fan. If you stand for nothing, “What are you standing for Aaron Burr?” “I’m not Aaron Burr.” I’m not going to go out and preach to you what you should believe but I will share values that are common and thoughtful. At that point, you have to realize that you’re not for everybody but if they don’t hear your message, then it wasn’t meant for them.

I say that to Crystal all the time when we talk about people being d-bags on the internet sometimes and I’m like, “You’re not popular until people don’t like you.”

I was a homecoming queen in high school and college. I don’t think it’s a proper interview with me if I haven’t dropped this. Not to say I do many. I always said the same exact thing. You’re bringing something to the table that in some ways will be polarizing to somebody, so I’ll take it. I don’t mind it as much but it’s for me when I feel it’s impacting other people. I get the nicest messages. My mom has always said, “At work and life, you got to screenshot that and put it in a kudos folder because you’re going to need it.” I have taken many screenshots for myself, that on those days where maybe somebody says something that makes me crazy or I lose a couple of followers. Luckily, we’ve gotten to the point where I don’t notice if I lose a follower. That’s a little maddening. Crystal, you’re totally in the same boat. You think about the people who have felt empowered and gotten a voice. I’m like, “That’s more important to me that they feel that they have a platform for them.”

To never offend anyone means that you don’t get to have a personality either. What’s the point? What are you doing?

That is what I love about Peloton too. “I want to hear what you think.” I feel strongly about that. Twitter is also a cesspool, but I don’t go on it often. If I see a Peloton instructor say something, there’s always all these comments like, “Please stop talking about religion, politics, and society.” If you went to a class in person, you would get all of that and that’s part of it. Part of the reason I have become passionate about the brand and what it does for people is that when I feel employees can authentically be themselves and they’re not being censored in their environment, that’s a company I want to support. I have worked in investment banking for a long time. I don’t anymore. Thank goodness. I moved to a company where I feel I can be my authentic self and that’s what I want to experience. There were days where I say, “I need to hear what Alex Toussaint thinks today. It’s going to make me better.”

“You woke up today. Don’t forget to smile.” They say many wise things.

I’m obsessed with Cody. Everyone’s like, “You’re going to be obsessed with Cody.” I want to be his friend badly.

I feel that way about Jenn Sherman. I want to sit down and chat with her.

She’s cool. She’s doing Yacht Rock, isn’t she?

Yes.

Everyone’s like, “You’re in New York. You’ve been to the studio.” I’m like, “I haven’t.” When we started in the beginning, I didn’t because I had no clue what was going on and I was too insecure. I was going to go to the opening night of PSNY and it got closed. This is not a great story. We finally did leave New York. We went to see my parents in Connecticut, but we want to get COVID testing. Tom will love this. It’s up in your brain. We weren’t comfortable taking an Uber. We haven’t taken any taxi or Uber this whole time, so we walked. It was about 5 miles each way and we had to go up to Midtown. The testing was in a legit abandoned parking lot in a tent and it was a zombie movie. Erik and I walked up and he’s like, “It’s like a zombie apocalypse,” and it was. That’s the part Tom will like. The part Crystal will like is when I was walking up, we passed PSNY and it is gorgeous. Ally’s face was plastered on the building and I looked at it. It was as if I had seen Oz for the first time.

I know that when, God-willing, the world gets back to normal, I am going to have a lot of Peloton dates there, but people keep saying, “I’m coming in and we’re going to go to a class.” I’m like, “Of course.” People have said. “We change the name from Stay Home Stay Motivated.” I’m like, “No.” I wasn’t that confident in it when I was first asked. Now I am because like any good superhero story, it’s our origin story. I’ll be the first to tell you. It’s not a great acronym. I could have come up with something sexier. However, I needed it badly at that moment and it resonated with many people. Your Peloton is at your house. For the rest of your life, you’ve got to be motivated in your home.

The rest of us travel all the way across the country to ride a bike we already have at home because that’s what Peloton does to us, but that’s great. That’s the beauty of it.

On the first route I took, the bike showed up and I was dancing around and I was happy. I got on the first live ride. I could find it was Alex Toussaint. Alex is like, “Jenny goes biking. Why aren’t you here?” Up until that moment, I hadn’t even thought about the immersive studio experience. I was like, “That’s cute. He’s just ten minutes away.” The first class I will have to go to, it will have to be a Cody class.

You will be able to do it. when they open it up, you will have lots of options.

I set up an SHSM Pen Pal program. I would keep seeing posts of people who had never met and they’d say, “So and so sent me a card and so sent me a bracelet and so sent me a t-shirt.” If you look at what’s happening, you’d never think of brilliant ideas. They’re already happening and you say, “I’m going to pluck that one out.” I’m connecting people and so much of the feedback was, “I need this. I’m a teacher,” or “I’m a mom and I’m trying to take care of things. I can’t see my friends and I miss my friends,” or “We have some military spouses.” I say, “I don’t know anyone.” We have a lot of Canadian followers who are passionate about it and they want to tread badly. That’s part of it for me too. I have seen some friendships that I know are locked and loaded forever and that’s something powerful.

What is your leaderboard name so people can find you?

It is JennyGoesBiking, which I felt was cute at the time. I don’t think I realized the weight of a good leaderboard name. The one thing I’ll say is it’s easy to pronounce. Luckily, I’ve gotten a couple of shout outs during big rides. It’s funny when Alex says, “Do not make your leaderboard name your Yahoo Mail password because I can’t pronounce that.” I am JennyGoesBiking and my husband is JokerGoesBiking, which is cuter but it’s too late. I had exceeded the followers, but I unfollowed most people because I was like, “I can’t follow half of them.” I have a black and white photo of my wedding photo booth where I will never replicate that level of gorgeousness. People are like, “That’s glam.” I’m like, “That’s what I look like every day.”

How’s your husband pressured you to change your leaderboard name to HarleyQuinnGoesBiking?

He’s not. Although he loves the Joker. He hit 200 rides and I got them all Batman balloons. In my opinion, it’s cute. I almost got mad at him. I’m like, “Your name is cute.” He’s like, “You gave it to me.” My parents are getting their bike and my dad had a heart attack in March of 2020. He’s okay but he’s trying to figure out. He does walking in cardiac rehab and he’s like, “We’re going to get the bike. You influenced us to do it.” My dad’s name is Bob but we call him Bob-O. He will be BobOGoesBiking.

He should be BobKaneGoesBiking.

We watched the documentary about Bob Kane on Hulu, which you’ve probably seen before. My mom is like, “I’m going to be SomethingGoesBiking.” In our little way, it’s become a cute thing.

It’s like your own Peloton leaderboard surname.

I’m okay with that because people can find me. Crystal, I’m sure this happens to you. The weirdest thing is when someone does an Instagram Story. The instructors were trying to be on the leaderboard during quarantine and support people. They’ll say, “Tunde gave me a high five. I’ve got a couple of stories. JennyGoesBiking high fives me.” I’m like, “That is not worth the story.” I reply, “This is just little me on my bicycle but I am thrilled that that made your day.”

Wait until it’s JenniGoesBiking and it’s someone just pretending to be you. That will happen. Do you have any advice for new people?

The thing I’ll say is to find your tribe, which a lot of people say. Part of it is distilling down that intimidation factor. It is not an intimidating platform, at least for me. I’m also aware that I’ve done a lot of classes in person but for me, it was the first cycling class where I had metrics. I was like, “Am I going to like this?” I do love it and I’m obsessed with it. We put that question out to the community. I do an Ask SHSM once a month and I say, “I’m going to crowdsource your brilliance because I don’t have it all.” Someone said, “What do you wish you knew?” A lot of the answers were, “I wish I knew there were beginner classes. I wish I knew to take how to ride your bike.”

People either have friends or have someone who is influencing them to get a bike. They think they immediately have to jump on to clubbing or 60-minute and you start out of the gate intimidated. You don’t have to do that. You can build your way there. For me, that’s some of the best advice that people gave. The other thing is to be kind to yourself. If I could take back all that time that I wasted in those classes looking at those other people and comparing myself, I could have solved world hunger. It’s not good self-talk. It does nothing for you. I always tell people, “You have to be kind to yourself.” More than ever, 2020 has taught me that wellness has to be fully integrated into your life.

It can’t be because it works with your schedule or, “I’m meeting my friend after work.” That’s not what it is anymore. Work-life balance isn’t necessarily ever something that’s attainable. To me, work-life workout balance is also integration. It’s not one or the other. Grab the weights for five minutes or take a ten-minute ride. I remember in the beginning, I felt guilty if a five-minute cooldown counted as a ride. I would say, “That’s not right. Take the cooldown. Your body needs it.” There’s a lot of judgment that we put on ourselves and take it out.

The other one, which is random probably, is I love the sleep meditation program with Ross Rayburn. The first two weeks we had the Peloton, I said to Erik, “We’re going to do sleep meditation.” He was like, “Okay.” It became such a part of the practice. The other thing it helped me with was hearing instructors outside of the bike experience. If I go do an outdoor walk or an outdoor run or a strength training, I’m receptive because I’ve done their voice in my ear, thing. Anything that can diversify how you experience the platform makes it such a more well-rounded experience.

If you want your husband to take a sleep meditation, you need to rebrand it and tell him it’s a Sandman meditation and then he’d be on board.

 

A Beatles meditation. That would work in our house.

Before we go, remind everybody also where they can find you on social media.

We would love for everyone to join. It’s @StayHomeStayMotivated. On the bike, it’s #SHSM. We launched a website to showcase who we are, about us, the work we do philanthropically, and how to get involved. Be sure to look out for that too.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to join us.

It’s such a pleasure to chat with you on many topics. Wishing you both the best.

Same to you. You’ll have to get your husband and Tom together. They could probably have a whole separate podcast episode.

I can’t wait. You are amazing. Thank you.

Thank you.

—

That’s it for this one. What pray tell do you have in store for people next week?

We’ve got another really special treat next week. It’s going to be an interview with Jeff Wall. Jeff Wall has the most interesting hobby because he’s a pilot, but he helps rescue dogs like airlifts them. We’re going to hear all about that, plus his love of Peloton. It’s going to be fascinating.

Until then, where can people find?

People can find me on Facebook.com/CrystalDOKeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter on the Bike and of course the Tread, @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TomOKeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Don’t forget our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/theclipout. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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• https://FieldTesting.onepeloton.com/key/OPMP
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About Jenny Westin

Meet Jenny — your number one hype woman, confidant, and curator of all things inspirational. Having lived in the heart of New York City for over 15 years, she truly believes that anything is possible, even her own wellness journey. Since 2018, Jenny has lost 80 lbs and has learned a lot of lessons along the way! Living in 500 square feet and having every boutique fitness class just an Uber ride away (usually 5 minutes late), working out at home was never part of the equation. Enter a Peloton bike and global pandemic and all that changed forever.

By day, Jenny is a professional communicator and employee engagement specialist, with her work spanning investment banking and technology. She married her longtime love Erik in 2019 and (in “normal” life) you can find them exploring Europe, nestled away watching classic films, gallivanting through Disney World and ComicCon, watching tennis, taking in the latest Broadway show, and finding the best experiences NYC has to offer.

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