• Peloton parts ways with Tom Cortese.
• Peloton discontinues heart rate armband.
• Peloton is hosting a body appreciation panel.
• Peloton sent out a Lululemon discount offer to members.
• The Lulu/Peloton collection drops on October 11.
• You can meet the new Peloton-Lulu Lemon ambassadors in Chicago.
• Peloton announces partnership with New York Road Runners.
• The University of Michigan Bike+ is officially available.
• Callie Gullickson is pregnant.
• Sam Yo to become the first Thai actor to play the King in ‘The King and I.’
• Tunde makes the cover of Women’s Health.
• Tunde as also on the Today Show with an arm-toning exercise.
• Matt Wilpers stars in a new documentary called “The Ride.”
• Team Wilpers will be at the Chicago Marathon.
• Groove With Me honoring Jess Sims.
• Christine D’Ercole is speaking in England.
• Angelo has tips for adapting to early morning workouts.
• The Indianapolis Colts’ Head Coach loves his Peloton.
• The latest artist series features Pabllo Vittar. TCO Top 5.
• This week at Peloton. The Brittany Allen Collection dropped.
• Peloton teases a Breast Cancer Awareness apparel collection.
• Birthdays – Kirra Michel (10/10)

All this plus our interview with James Q Quick

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Peloton Inks Partnership With NYRR Plus Our Interview With James Q Quick

Welcome to The Clip Out episode 330.

You sound like area code, 330. I guess we sound like area codes for a while, 212 is an area code. Would you like a fun fact about area code? ZIP codes which are our area codes. This is how this all started. Have you ever wondered why area codes don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason? New York is 212. LA is I think 312. They’re not next to each other if you start grouping them. Here’s why they are the way they are. It’s because when they were issued, people had rotary phones.

For our younger listeners, in rotary phones, you would turn a dial. In case there’s ever an emergency in a major metropolitan area, they wanted people to be able to call quickly without overwhelming the phone lines because while the phone is rotarising, the emergency is continuing and it blocks up the phone line so you need that call to be fast.

They issued the shorter area code to the more populous locations. New York, LA, and Chicago get short ones. When you get to Springfield, Missouri or Jefferson City is 573 because they’re like, “Who cares? It’s in the middle of the country. How many people could be in danger? How many people could be trying to call? If they were, they would be fine.” That’s why when you look at a map, the area codes look like there’s no rhyme or reason. There was a lot of thought put into it. There you go. You didn’t expect to hear that when you started your Peloton show today.

I did not.

I sympathize. Somewhere out there, there’s a first-time listener who’s like, “Is it always like this? Do they ever talk about the Peloton that I like so much?”

We do. We are going to get there.

In fact, we have a book club coming up and it’s all about Peloton.

This particular book club or this particular meeting will be because we’re going to have the author there, which is David Miller. The book is called Sweating Together. As we kicked off our book club, we decided to have our very first book club meeting. We thought it was fitting to have a homage to the community, which is a lot of what this book is, and the community had a lot to do with building Peloton as a company.

He’s also a Peloton member, user, and fan, which is what inspired the book. Moving forward, some of the books might not necessarily be about Peloton because there’s a finite number of books about Peloton. Although thanks to the instructors, it’s getting less finite every day, but they will always be from people who we know are Peloton members.

Members who are also authors.

That’s coming up on October 10th. We would love to see you and you can get all the information at Patreon.com/TheClipOut. Don’t worry. It doesn’t cost you a dime, other than the cost of the book. You could check it out from the library, I suppose.

All you have to do is click Join Community. That’s where you’re going to find the meeting, all the details on how to join, and all those things.

There is a free level. It’s open to everybody. You don’t have to give us any money to participate, so come on in, the water is fine. Coming up on the show, we do talk about Peloton. What pray tell do you have in store for people?

We have all kinds of Peloton news. The last founder of Peloton has left Peloton. The heart rate armband has been discontinued.

There’s no correlation between those two events.

None at all.

I like to create conspiracy theories.

We also have a lot of information about the Chicago Marathon weekend. We have a lot of announcements of what is going on with instructors this weekend or this week in general. We have a visit from Angelo. We talk about tips for adapting to early morning workouts. This one is for our teachers.

Don’t do it.

That is always your answer, Tom.

I’ve adapted. I’m not doing it. I should also say that the Chicago Marathon information is not one clump. It’s sprinkled lightly throughout like parmesan cheese, except I don’t sprinkle that lightly.

I was going to say, “What’s light about that?”

It’s like a little seek-and-find. Every time we mentioned the Chicago Peloton on Tour, you can be like, “Ding,” and then you know you found one. Before we get to all of that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, iHeart, TuneIn, but not Google for long because they’re getting rid of podcasts because nobody listens to them over there. Sorry if you’re the one who does. You can always tell when shameless plug starts because Crystal picks up her phone to watch on YouTube. If you’d like to watch on YouTube, it’s YouTube.com/TheClipOut. You can go over there.

There’s no phone in my hand.

Not now that I’ve said that out loud, but as soon as I started shameless plugs.

My watch was going crazy. I was seeing if there was breaking news.

It happens. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. You can find us on the aforementioned Patreon, where you can get these episodes ad-free. If we get them early, you get them early. We record bonus episodes. These shows have gotten so long, believe it or not. We try to tighten them up, so we have a special bonus episode called The Clip Out, where it’s more like this but it’s deleted scenes where it’s stuff that didn’t make the show that we didn’t have enough time for, and it’s the instructors we don’t like as much.

Talk about starting rumors.

We’re like, “This person doesn’t deserve to be in the actual show. We’ll put them over in The Clip Out.” You can find all of that over at Patreon. We’d love to have you. It’s great to help support the show and pay for things like computers, cameras, and things like that. Finally, don’t forget, we have a newsletter at TheClipOut.com, where you can have the links and things like that sent to you, or just a weekly reminder that we exist so you can continue to listen. There’s all that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

—

As we alluded to in the opening of the show, Tom Cortese is no longer with Peloton. We should say that if you’re watching on YouTube, this is not a picture of Tom Cortese.

There’s a reason for that.

That’s because they already replaced him with this guy.

He’s the Chief of Content. Is that what it is? There are so many C-Suites.

Chief Product Officer.

There it is. Nick Caldwell has now joined Peloton, and Tom Cortese has exited. It’s so weird.

He was the last holdout. He was like the drummer from The Guess Who, the last original member.

He was, and now they are all gone. The positive side of it is that as much as none of us like change, there has been a lot of change. You might as well start with a whole new crew. If you’re going to take over as CEO, you have to bring in people who get your vision, see your vision, and support your vision. It’s pointless if it wasn’t.

It’s almost like a new presidential administration. It would be funny if people treated corporate entities the way they treat rock bands. It’s like, “It’s not the original Chief Product Officer. I don’t like that.”

I did that for a while. I’m past it now. I’ve come to terms with my frustrations. I was bitter a little bit.

Also, people shouldn’t do that with bands because I don’t know how to break it to you, they are corporate entities. Skynyrd is out there now. Not one original member. They still sound great. They still call it Lynyrd Skynyrd.

They still play their music. At the end of the day, it’s one of those tribute bands. That’s the word I was looking for. Welcome, Nick Caldwell. I’m curious to see what you do. It’ll be fine.

Peloton has discontinued the heart rate armband.

This does not shock me.

Due to popular demand.

The thing is Peloton has sold a heart rate monitor from day one, at least since I started Peloton back in 2015. They didn’t have a heart rate monitor. This armband came out right in the middle of all of the weirdness that occurred. I think it was in the middle of COVID. Times were still good for Peloton and it was a new product.

It can do anything.

I remember specifically talking about how weird it was that they had bought a company whose sole purpose was to create watches. I was like, “They should focus on exercise equipment.” That was back in that time frame where they were like, “We can do it all.” It seems that Peloton is continuing to pare down.

They weren’t trademarking like, “What if we sold our own makeup?”

I do. Nothing ever came of that.

“What if we had our own food?” Maybe your own Peloton Goop that you eat or Soylent Green.

I’m not saying we will never see a nutrition component. I still think that’s out there somewhere.

If Soylent Green is made out of people, what do you think Peloton Soylent Green would be made out of?

I don’t know, Tom.

I’m just kicking that around the old Noggin. It’s former instructors. Soylent Green is made from people.

I don’t like it. I don’t like this. How did we get in a weird sci-fi movie?

We called Tread-pluses.

I’m more okay with that.

As long as it’s not your Tread+.

Anyway, I was glad to see this because it’s more of that paring down and getting back to basics. I think that they need to continue going down that road and sticking with the core business. Let’s do more of that. It was taken out of the store quietly. They take it out of Amazon. I’ve reached out to Peloton. I was like, “It’s discontinued?” “Yes, it is.” There you go, confirmed.

Do you think they will allow them on sale until the last one is gone, or do you think we’re going to see these at TJ Maxx?

I don’t know. People have already been seeing them on TJ Maxx. They’ve been seeing Peloton stuff in general.

Yeah, but I meant the heart rate armband. Peloton is hosting a body appreciation panel.

I don’t remember if we talked about this. The last episode was a blur and I wasn’t drunk the whole time.

Not with the way they’d make those drinks. It was a Disney cruise.

That one that we kept having in the adult entertainment room, where they don’t let the kids in, the Johnston. Whatever they were putting in that one was strong, especially that first night. I was like, “Whoa.” I can’t remember. Did we talk about the body appreciation collection last episode?

I don’t think we did.

I want to briefly mention while we talk about the body appreciation panel discussion, I’m not sure why the timing is happening now. Maybe there’s nothing special about it.

It’s never a bad time to appreciate your body.

Thank you. They put together a collection of classes that these instructors that are shown here and a few others are they’re talking through why you should appreciate your body. There are meditations, yoga and Rose, bike rides, and all about the focus of appreciating the body you have and not focusing on I need to look like blank, which we all do and I struggle. They are also having this panel discussion and this takes place on October 12, 2023. That’s pretty cool.

I would think that there are some of these instructors. They probably all have some jerks in the comments saying something, but some probably have more than others.

If you are not the “ideal,” whatever that is supposed to be, we all have it in our head, but it differs.

They want to be shorter. Shorter people want to be taller.

You have straight hair and you want to be curly.

I just want to have hair.

If you don’t have hair, you want it. I like that they’re doing this. I just wasn’t sure if it was related. You know how we have Mental Health Month, and then they talk about mental health. I thought there might be something related to this.

Do you think this is instructor-driven? If the instructor is not driving it or if the instructors aren’t like, “It would be nice if we did something like this and I’d like to take part,” then that means someone has figured it out, going around to instructors and saying, “We’re starting this thing. There’s no one out there saying anything specific. Would you maybe want to take part?” That can end very poorly. I remember when I worked in radio. We would get these scammy weight-loss supplements that they would want us to shill. There would always be that awkward moment where they were like, “Tom, we got a client. I think it might be a good thing?”

What did you say?

“Also, Hans Wiemann called.” I said no to every one of those.

Did you?

I did. There were some DJs making some serious banks. I was like, “All of these are bullcrap. I don’t want to sell them to people.” I didn’t do it.

We’ve still never done that to this day. There’s a lot of stuff out there.

Each person had their own 800 number. That’s how they tracked it back in the day. If you call that 800 number, then that DJ got credit for it. Some of them were making some serious money. I was like, “These are all scammy. I don’t think they work. I think they might be dangerous and I don’t want to sell it to people.”

Focus on the stuff that you want to do because forcing yourself to do things you are not excited about becomes much harder. Share on X

I’m glad you didn’t do that, Tom.

That’s what goes through my head when I see stuff like that. In the last episode, we announced the Lululemon partnership, which was mind-blowing. It’s like when the Eagles got back together. They hate each other, but there’s so much money so we hate each other less. Peloton sent out a coupon for 10% off Lululemon stuff. Will it expire before the new collection drops?

I don’t know. Sadly, I never looked. I assumed it would be there.

To save money. That’s what I say.

You want me to go save money. I will save some money.

You’re going to buy it.

We were on the cruise ship and I was trying to focus on enjoying the time, not shopping. The only exception I made to that, we will get to later. I did not want to spend my time shopping at Lululemon. Also, Lululemon stresses me out

Is it the Lulu or the lemon? It’s the Lulu for me.

It’s the lemon for me. For real though, they have so many things to choose from. I like to see it in person, but I don’t want to go to that store because the store stresses me out.

If it makes you feel any better, they are streamlining the things to choose from and they’re starting with the Mirror. It’s no longer a thing to choose from.

The first Lulu-Peloton collection is going to drop on October 11th. This is part of a five-year deal. We can expect that to happen pretty frequently since they are going to be a primary, not exclusive. By the way, those of you who heard the word exclusive, I never said the word exclusive. I definitely said primary. They are not going to be the only people selling Peloton or making Peloton apparel.

It’s like polyamory. They’re just the primary but not exclusive. They can still see other people. They just can’t catch feelings.

That is exactly it.

Can you tell I got a Savage Love Magnum subscription for my birthday?

I can. Do you want to tell them who it is from?

From my son. That’s weird. He was like, “This is a weird website.” I was like, “Don’t they have filters at your college? What’s going on?” On the heels of the Lululemon-Peloton partnership, we now have official Peloton/Lululemon ambassadors.

Erik Jäger, Chelsea Jackson Roberts, Hannah Frankson, and Adrian Williams have all been officially named as Lululemon ambassadors. Hannah Frankson is so stoked about this. She is talking about it non-stop. She’s so excited.

I guess you love Lululemon and you’re a Peloton instructor, but you can’t say the word. You know what I mean? It’s like, “Don’t say that out loud.” It’s like if, God forbid, my ex-wife’s new husband liked The Monkees, he’ll never say that in front of her.

She would not be okay with that.

It would not go well. This is also fascinating because we’ve talked for a while about what will this do to the ambassadors’ deals with Nike, Adidas, and stuff like that. I guess they’re funneling instructors that maybe don’t have deals like that in place to Lululemon. It’ll be interesting to see if all these people stay Lululemon ambassadors or if we see a rotation. It’s like Adrian does it for a year, and then he drops out, and they bring in another one.

I’m curious about that as well, especially some of the instructors like Callie who don’t have any ambassador programs. The other instructors haven’t had an opportunity to do that. Will they be stepping up at some point as well? Who knows? That will be interesting to check out. When Peloton announced this, they also announced all of the upcoming Peloton tour stops.

We still have Chicago, Germany, and London. Those three are all going to have some Lululemon component. There are going to be four events at the Chicago one now. By the way, that drop that I talked about earlier is going to drop on October 11th at the Peloton store. If you are at the Chicago event, you can start buying as early as the sixth. The same day you hear this episode.

We should also say “Dang” because it was Peloton on Tour Chicago mentioned.

How many dings are we going to get? There’s one.

Another week, another exciting partnership.

This one is so exciting to me.

Peloton has partnered with NYRR. I’m very excited about that.

The New York Road Runners.

It’s an abbreviation. They should call it NYRR.

That sounds much better.

If they open a marketing department, I can help them out, “Moving forward, you’re now called NYRR.”

You sound like a horse neighing. This is probably why they’re not going to take your marketing advice.

It would be amazing if I ever got a job in marketing, in the first place, to be perfectly honest. Someday, I think they should have one. This is super cool. The New York Road Runners are the people behind the New York City Marathon among others.

This collaboration is going to mean that Peloton’s scenic and outdoor content is going to bring the excitement of New York Road Running races to runners everywhere. There’s going to be audio classes released in late 2023. Scenic content is going to be launching in the spring of 2024 on the Peloton Tread/Tread+. It goes on to talk about the fact that auto incline is going to bring some exciting impact to that. You might remember that the Peloton tread has an auto incline. The Tread+ does not.

Our theory was they’d roll out the software because of the CPSC situation.

Exactly, but that recall ends sometime in November. I can’t remember if it’s the end of November or the beginning of November, but it’s coming up. The fact that they did not say that it’s only launching on Peloton tread makes me freaking excited that we are going to get our auto incline on the Tread+. We’re hoping that that’s a thing. Also a reminder, you are running out of time to return your tread if you would like to. Anyway, this is going to be a multi-year deal.

They are going to have a partnership through 2025 and it’s going to help create motivational fitness content accessible to runners of all abilities. They are also going to activate around the United Airlines, New York City half, and the RBC Brooklyn half. That’s two other races that you’re going to see stuff. At the New York City Marathon, there’s going to be a ton of Peloton instructors. Rad Lopez, Mariana Fernandez, Selena Samuela, Susie Chan, and Jeffrey McEachern are all going to be part of the New York City Marathon.

This is great because they sell more bikes than treads. I don’t think that’s a news flash. There’s also a mentality in the running community of “I don’t need an instructor.” By getting into this world in this capacity, that might help them move some treads and show that having a running coach is the same way people look at a spin instructor or Tonal and say, “It’s like having your own personal trainer. Running coaches are expensive. Here’s a way to get one in a cost-effective way.” You don’t just pooh-poo it because you think you are better than that.

I’m very excited about this partnership. I can’t wait to see what this content looks like.

The University of Michigan branded Bike+ is finally available for purchase.

We talked a lot about what the price is going to be. Apparently, it’s a $300 upcharge to get it customized. That’s not that bad.

It’s not that bad, but I will also say it looks like its $300 price is on top of full retail. Sometimes these bikes go on sale. It will also be interesting to see if they have deals or whatnot, whether it will apply to these bikes or they will always be like, “If you want your branded bike, it’s $2,795.”

It will be interesting to see that. That’s a great question. It probably depends on how well they sell.

I don’t care about my alma mater because my college was a joke. I went to UMSL. Google that. If I went to a school that I cared about, I could totally see myself going, “Let me let me spend the extra money and get the branded bike,” or if it rolls out to other things like if I was going to use a Peloton and they had a Mystery Science Theater 3000 bike, I could see myself going for something like that, or some Monkees bike. I might actually ride a Peloton if they had a Monkees-branded bike.

Are you listening to that, Peloton?

Peloton does not give two squirts of piss about whether or not I ride a bike.

I know. That’s just trying to continue a years-old tradition. It used to be exciting when we said things like that.

People have made their peace with the fact that I don’t do it.

They’re over it.

Coming up after this, we’re going to tackle instructors in the news. We’re going to tell you which instructor is pregnant and which instructor isn’t writing a book. Hint, it’s all of them at the moment.

—

Callie Gullickson is having a baby, and presumably so is the man in her life.

Chris Howell, her husband, is also having a baby. The baby is due in March. They did announce fairly early compared to some of the other instructors. I’m not saying this but Callie said that she felt that her boobs were very obvious.

I will take her at her word.

It’s also crazy that people comment on things. Somebody was like, “I saw that your chest was changing shape,” and that’s not the words they used. She was like, “I know, right?”

She probably didn’t want people to be like, “She had a boob job,” and if she wanted to get a boob job, go get a boob job.

It’s her decision. She didn’t want people to not know the real reason.

I guess she gets on that body appreciation panel. Although it sounds like she was getting a little bit too much appreciation. Tone it down, internet comments. Congrats to her and her husband.

The whole family.

Sam Yo is making history as the first actor of Thai origin to play the King in The King and I.

He will be doing his one night of the King on October 7th. That’s coming up so if you are lucky enough to get to attend, I would love to hear all about it. That is so incredibly cool. I get goosebumps when I think about it.

It’s also crazy to think that in all this time, there has never been a Thai actor to play that role.

I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but we were talking about this in The Clip Out, where we have Slack for all of the Helper Bees. One of the writers is doing a story on this because she was so fascinated by it and thought that this was such a tremendous ordeal, and it is. As she was researching it, she found out that The King and I is banned in Thailand because of the depiction of the king.

Neither version of the Broadway play or movie has ever been aired in Thailand. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the fact that there has never been a Thai actor. It also might be because as a society, we’re starting to get a lot better about how we put people in roles that match the roles.

It’s the ethnicity. I don’t want to say weird, but it’s an interesting situation in that at some point too, they are also actors. You want people to act. I get that you don’t want people to wear a black face, yellow face, brown face, or whatever you call it. I totally get that but sometimes it’s starting to slip into, “You’re not the same religion so you can’t do that,” but that religion does have an ethnic component but not exclusive. It gets slippery.

I do find that fasting. Yul Brynner famously played the role for 4,500 performances. He ate up a lot of potential real estate incomers. Thanks a lot, Yul, who’s Russian by the way, or Russian-American. I don’t think he was from Russia but that’s his heritage. That was famously associated with him for years. I actually got to see him perform The King and I when I was a child in a touring production.

How cool is that?

I saw it a couple of times. Congrats to Sam Yo. That’s cool.

It is a very special moment.

Tunde is on the cover of Women’s Health Magazine.

She looks amazing. They did a great job there.

I don’t notice other women. Am I looking at Tunde? Is that what’s going on?

You don’t even know.

I just see More Core Plz and there’s the name Tunde. I see that and then she sparks a new health-focused art. Is there even a human person on this magazine cover? I don’t see it.

It’s okay to appreciate attractive people.

I’m blind to it. Are we talking about Soylent Green again?

This is a huge deal. This is not only huge that she’s on the cover but she also got a chance to talk through her story. I love the very first line in the article. She introduces herself or they ask the question like, “Who are you?” She didn’t say Peloton instructor and personal trainer. She said, “Confidence builder.” I love that and I think that she does do that for people. Congratulations to Tunde and there will be more to come.

I don’t know if she builds confidence but she builds arms.

She does build arms. She did that on the Today Show, which eventually this commercial will be over. If you’re watching YouTube, you will be able to see it.

It says NyQuil. Use promo code TCO at check out for your NyQuil.

We’re not repping NyQuil. Tunde was on The Today Show and she brought to them exercises to tone your arms. That was the whole idea of the segment. I have done arm workouts with Tunde enough times to know that even five minutes and your arms will be burning. Again, congrats to Tunde.

Matt Wilpers is starring in a new short form of documentary called The Ride.

It’s not a book. Can we celebrate that?

Yes, we can. Thank you for not having a book. It’s great that these instructors have books, but it also seems like it’s week after week. For a while, it was who’s pregnant and now it’s who’s got a book coming out.

Matt is starring in this short-form documentary that was sponsored by Oars + Alps, which Matt has been representing for a while. This is specifically documenting his ride at Lehigh the Gran Fondo whatever, the long ride that takes place in Lehigh.

If it was a long ride, it would be a long documentary.

You can go to our website for this article. You can watch the video on our YouTube channel, or you can go over to Oars + Alps. I think it’s on their YouTube channel as well. Congratulations to Matt and thank you for not writing a book.

Now if he writes a book, he’s going to be mad at you.

I doubt he will ever hear these words, so it probably will never matter.

Speaking of Matt Wilpers, Team Wilpers will be at the Chicago Marathon.

The whole team is going to be there celebrating. I shouldn’t say the whole team. I think that Team Wilpers is quite a large organization so it’s probably not everybody.

A good chunk of said team.

Thank you, but they’re going to be able to meet you at the packet pick-up. There’s going to be a meet-up there at the Health and Fitness Expo. You can find them right after you get your bib number. There’s also going to be a 5K cheer station at mile marker 2.75 on Saturday, a marathon shake-out run outside of Urban Space, and then there’s going to be also a meet-up at Stan’s Donuts and Coffee that day, and then on Sunday, there’s going to be a cheer station at mile 2.8 and also a second cheer station at mile 25.75 for those running the actual marathon.

Lots of opportunities to see Team Wilpers hanging out. We also use this entire article as a reminder that there are several instructors running and raising money for the Reeve Foundation. There is a series of links. If you go to our website, you can pull up this article and you will be able to go right to each of these fundraising links and donate to whichever or all of these instructors. You got Tobias, Logan, Mariana, and Rad all running and raising money for the Reeve Foundation. It’s very cool.

Groove With Me is honoring Jess Sims.

This took place earlier. They were honoring her for being a role model for girls. They were also honoring her for all of the work that she has done on game day and being a Peloton instructor, basically being awesome.

Congrats to her. Camila Ramon is celebrating two years at Peloton.

She sure is. Congrats to Camila.

Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to Angelo from MetPro. He has tips for adapting to early morning workouts. They’ll be better tips than I can provide you because I’ll say don’t.

—

Joining us is Angelo from MetPro here to answer all of your fitness and nutrition questions.

Thanks for having me back.

We are so glad you are here. We have another teacher question for you. This one is from Stacey Rob. She says that she has to get used to working out early in the morning again, which is great except for the afternoon slump that comes with an early rise time. What can she do to make it through that, eat something, move something?

Probably eat something. Likely, what’s happening is it’s altering Stacey’s blood sugar throughout the day and you’re up more hours first half of your day. You should be able to fuel yourself in such a way that you’re not having a massive slump in the afternoon. Granted working out and long day at work, you might be a little more tired in the afternoon. That’s normal. I know what you’re talking about. You’re talking about that after-lunch crash.

The best thing you can do is stabilize your blood sugar by trying to eat at least three times before you get that afternoon crash. Here’s what I say that. Since you’re getting up early, if you don’t want to workout on a heavy breakfast, you can grab yourself a light snack. Think of a protein shake, a piece of fruit, or something quick healthy light that you can grab, head out the door, and get a good workout in.

After that, you should have time to get a good breakfast and a well-balanced lunch. If you do that, see if that does not have a massive impact on your energy throughout the afternoon. Sleep plays a role. In general, I find a lot of my clients that workout first thing in the morning. Once they get their food cadence dialed in, they do well. There’s a lot of research and statistics that support early morning working out is very productive. I would encourage you to keep it up, Stacey.

User experience is one of those things where a great experience is less likely to be noticed than a poor experience. Share on X

I guess that explains why I workout in the afternoon.

Tom is a rebel.

If there’s a way to do it wrong, I will.

Here’s the way to f*ck the system.

It’s funny you haven’t been eating more. In theory, based on everything you said, that should make Tom more energetic, and yet I just came home and he took a nap.

I’m not a young man. I did a lower-body workout where I did like 20,000 pounds. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for me.

We’ll give him a pass.

What you’re saying is my nap is MetPro-approved.

Not to you by MetPro. It’s your new tagline, Tom.

This was a quick one, but if people would like stuff like this tailor-made for them, where can they find you?

—

Indianapolis Colts head coach Shane Steichen is a Peloton user.

He was talking all about Peloton and coffee. They’re pretty much his two favorite things. I don’t blame him.

I hope his Peloton is close to the toilet.

It’s funny. There are all these shirts out there that you can get that are like, “Coffee and Peloton like two other people are all I like.” This guy needs that shirt.

He has a whole team of people to coach. Hopefully, he likes more than two of them.

That’s true. I don’t know how many people are on whatever team that is, but he should get that t-shirt specifically for 42 people or whatever is on this team.

—

The latest artist series features Pabllo Vittar. I will let you explain who that is.

Pabllo Vittar is a Brazilian drag queen, singer, and songwriter. She is known for her larger-than-life personality. Her music blurs the lines between traditional Latin Pop, EDM, and Brazilian Funk, which I didn’t know was a thing. I’m pretty curious about it now. She’s also become a trailblazer for the LGBTQ+ visibility in Brazil. She has garnered a following because of her catchy beats and empowering messages. This is going to be dropping on 10/5. By the time you hear this episode, it would have been already out.

There are going to be five different classes. Jeffrey is doing a 30-minute run. That is going to be dropping as a premiere at 11:30 AM, and then for the rest of them, there’s going to be a ride with Cody, full-body strength with Matty, a 15-minute row with Katie, and a 30-minute run with Camila. All of those are going to be dropping live on 10/5. I know that some of you are going to be like, “Who’s that?” I get it, but it’s good to open up and listen to things you’ve never heard. You might not like it. You might love it. I don’t know.

Peloton is a huge community. It can’t be Mötley Crüe every week.

It would only be fun for some people and you get sick of it. I will say this. It’s funny that things you think you’re going to love and the things you’re not going to love. For example, I took a Lanebreak of Janet Jackson and I was like, “This is going to be great.” It wasn’t great. It was not great at all. I didn’t know any of the songs. I was like, “I don’t know any of these songs.” It was a short ten minutes. It was only three songs. That does not mean that Janet Jackson sucks or that I think that she sucks, or whoever put the list together is awful. What that means is that didn’t match me that day. That’s it.

Somewhere, there’s a Janet Jackson fan who’s like, “I can’t believe they’re playing this song.”

Exactly. I love the variety. We should embrace that variety.

—

It is time for the TCO top five where we put out the call to you, and you let us know your favorite classes, and then we assemble them and regurgitate them at you.

This was an interesting week. I feel like people were a little distracted. We didn’t get as many entries as we usually do. Maybe they’re getting tired of this. If so, let us know. We’ll stop doing it. That’s no problem. You’re not going to hurt our feelings. In case, you were just distracted, one of the things that popped up was an old class, a Foo Fighters ride from 2021 with Emma Lovewell. This came up because of the awesome playlist. The person wanted to go take it.

Paul Kiddinger, thank you. I couldn’t remember who submitted it. He had just finished Dave Grohl’s book. That’s why he wanted to retake it. It was better than he even remembered, and he says that the book is also great. Make sure that you check that out if that’s something you want to check out because the clock is ticking on that one. That is going to go sometime soon.

There is the Busta Rhymes ride. This one was from 7/20. It came out from Camila Ramon. We had a couple of people that talked about this one. Michelle Gill Newton is Queen Michelle. She wanted to go back to a summertime ride to kick off fall with an energetic vibe. She says that the energy was insane. She took it to kick off October. Favorite Peloton meditation, “Anything by Ross Rayburn. That is my vote.”

Amanda Kay Price said that the new 30-minute sleep meditation was amazing. She’s recovering from hip replacement surgery and listening to soothing calming voice helps her drift off to sleep peacefully. It’s a huge blessing. We have the favorite Peloton Jess King ride and Brittany Allen. We’ll be talking more about this later. This is where all of the fashions were dropped for the Brittany Allen collection. That was from 9/28/23. It’s very challenging, I hear.

There’s a Janet Jackson ride. This was not the Lanebreak. This was the 30-minute one from Emma Lovewell. There’s a ton of good songs in here that even I know. There were eighteen songs on the playlist, Rhythm Nation, That’s the Way Love Goes, Nasty, and All For You. It wasn’t even out for a week and it already has 50,000 member workouts. It’s definitely one to look for. I will probably be circling back around to try that a little more. Not so deep cuts for people like me who are casual listeners.

We also have this week at Peloton.

A lot was going on. One of the things going on was Unity Day. It was Tuesday, October 3rd. There was a 45-minute walk plus run, and then there was also a Unity ride. The cool part about this was that they had multiple coaches like we used to get for the All For One class. The run had Jeffrey, Tobias, and Mayla. It also had Marcel, Nico, and Assal. All of them together on the walk run.

The ride had Erik Jäger, Mayla, Cliff, Charlotte, Mila, and Benny. That’s pretty cool. Also this week, we have a new focus flow for runners that’s going to be specific to the Chicago Marathon. It dropped on October 3rd. If you haven’t got any chance to check that out and you’re running for the marathon, what are you waiting for? Get that in right away.

The hip-hop tour continues. We are finally in the midwest. There is a 30-minute ride with Kendall and a 30-minute run with Kirsten. Finally, a reset with Denis Morton. There was a reset ride on October 3rd, and then a yoga flow that dropped as well on October 3rd. Hopefully, you get a chance to check those out. We’d love to know what your thoughts are on those.

There better be some Nelly and Chingy in that Midwest hip-hop ride.

Can I say that I feel like this hip-hop tour has gone on forever?

It’s 50 years.

No, the tour of this year.

There’s a lot to cover.

It’s a year-long celebration. I feel like we’ve talked about it so many times. They finally made it to the Midwest.

We’re always last. We are recording this wearing parachute pants. That’s how out of step we are. It’s official. We have a Brittany Allen collection, and Jess King made sure everyone knew.

She did and Brittany got to be a huge part of that. She was on the ride, and people that Brittany knew also were on the ride. If you haven’t seen the little thumbnail that comes up to show the class, it’s Jess and Brittany on stage. That’s pretty cool. Not everybody gets to go up on stage. I was yelled at when I accidentally went up there, trying to get to a bike. Don’t do that. This is so cool. I loved this drop so much. This is the one thing where I spent my money on the boat and I spent my time not focused on having fun. In fact, we were at a show and I was rudely shopping while we were in the show.

The show hadn’t actually started. The cruise director was like, “Don’t forget to do this thing.”

It was 6:15 by that time. I think it had officially started.

That’s a little bit of Frozen or whatever.

It was Believe, and I’ve watched Believe a million times. I also had my phone super dim. It made it a little bit of a crap shoot on what I got. I’m just kidding.

I don’t even know this. If you order things while your phone is dim, the colors on them are dimmed as well. That’s how that’s going to work when they show up. They’re going to be muted. It’s going to be a muted palette.

Brittany will make sure they’re amazing. I got the outfit that Brittany was wearing in the studio that day. I had the sparkly hoodie and then I got the white hoodie. I had to. How often do you find a sparkly hoodie? That’s my question for you.

I don’t shop for sparkly hoodies so I don’t know. Hoodies, yes. Sparkly, not so much.

Do you know how people have been saying to you forever that you need to dress up hoodie? This is going to be my dress-up hoodie because it’s going to be sparkly. Anyway, congrats to Brittany Allen for this. It’s finally happening.

In your career, especially in tech, embrace the community. Being involved in the community can lead to an infinite number of opportunities. Share on X

While we’re speaking of apparel, it was teased that Peloton will be releasing a breast cancer awareness collection.

It says coming soon, so we can expect it to be popping up anytime now. Some people are wondering if it’s going to be part of Lululemon. I don’t know because it looks like Leanne designed it. I wouldn’t think that they would use her specific design, but I don’t know how these things work, but it could be sometime in October. We know that since that’s breast cancer awareness month. Other than that, we’ll let you know the second it hits.

—

We have one birthday. It is from Kirra Michel. You can say happy birthday to her on October 10th.

That was Sydney’s due date.

How about that?

They didn’t have her until the 25th, but she was due on the 10th.

I know mine was sometime in October and I was born in September.

You were early. You’re actually on time. Happy birthday to Kirra.

Happy birthday. Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to James Q. Quick. Stick around.

—

Joining us is James Quick. He is a JavaScript developer, speaker, and teacher. He has also worked with companies like FedEx, Microsoft, CloudFlare, and a lot of others whose names I can’t pronounce. He’s here to talk to us. James, how is it going?

I’m doing good. I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

 

We appreciate you taking the time. I want to hear about your day job because I have questions. Big data nerd here. I probably know enough to be dangerous with my questions. I also like to start these interviews by understanding where people are coming from a fitness background. When did you find Peloton and decide this was a good product for you?

I have been an athlete all my life. I played sports all my life. I played basketball through high school. I worked with the women’s basketball team in college. My wife played soccer in college, so we still play co-ed soccer together to this day. She was the one who was into the idea. I was like, “That’s very expensive for something that we are never going to use.” I was negative about it, to be honest.

It was one of those things where it’s easy to stay at home and get a good workout in whatever. We got it and I quickly fell in love. The experience is one of the best out of anything workout-wise that I have ever done because I find myself being competitive by nature, like looking at a scoreboard and working a lot harder near the end to get to the top twenty or whatever the rankings are.

Specifically, I have struggled with back issues and other things. With Peloton, I could workout as hard as I possibly can and feel exhausted, but things don’t hurt after. It’s an amazing safe competitive workout for me that I started doing it a lot, especially when I had a torn labrum in my groin or my hip. I was supposed to have surgery but for various reasons during COVID, it got postponed and then canceled. Peloton was one of the things that I did to get back into shape. Now I’m back to normal without ever having surgery from doing not just Peloton, but Peloton was a big part of a safe workout for me to do during that time.

That’s saying a lot that you never had to end up in the surgery, but you were still able to keep working out that whole time. Did you guys buy during COVID?

Time is tough. It was right before COVID. I was going through that stuff during it and it was a good thing, like easy to do at home and still get exercise in.

It’s interesting when you said that you have always been an athlete. Often the take on computer people, coders, and that stuff is they completely disavow all of that stuff. I’m curious how you found the time to do both. They are both very time-consuming if you want to do them well, and you do the coding well. How did you find the time for all of that?

It’s all about habits. These are things from a sports perspective that I have done my entire life. Every time my wife and I moved to a new city, we found a co-ed soccer team to play together and found a basketball league to play in. It has always been where a lot of our relationships and our activities and stuff come from.

That’s always been second nature to us. Whether it’s doing a sport, running, trying to workout together, or doing Peloton. It’s been a big part of both of our lives for a long time. The older we get, we want to make sure we continue to do it and stay active. It’s like any other hobby. In a different context, people ask me like, “How do you get so many things done work-wise?” I do a lot of different things.

My thing is I always try to focus on stuff that I want to do that I’m excited about. If I find myself forcing myself to do things I’m not excited about, it becomes that much harder. I’m not forcing myself to do workouts. I know it’s going to be beneficial for me. I know I enjoy it, so I continue to focus on things that I enjoy and make that a priority.

That’s smart. I couldn’t help but wonder if you and your wife both do all these activities and sports together. When you got the Peloton, did you guys have to start scheduling the bike? How did that work?

I don’t think we had any overlap. Maybe a couple of times where we have gone back-to-back where she would go and then I would go after or something like that, but it will be random. I never kept a strict schedule or anything. I feel like I need to go and get a ride in, and I go. It’s never been a planned thing. We haven’t had many conflicts over that.

Has she let you live down the fact that you didn’t want it?

She is very happy at the fact that I enjoyed it after. We have an ongoing debate about the Peloton tread, which I’m in the position of being against it because we already have the Peloton, not that I don’t think it would be an amazing product. We already have the Peloton and she hates running on a treadmill anyway, which is interesting because she wants to push for it because she’s always disliked that and would much rather be outside. Unfortunately, in the South, it’s very hot in the summer, which makes that very difficult. That will be our ongoing debate about the Peloton tread. We are past that and rubbing it in of how much I enjoy the regular Peloton.

I feel like I need to speak up and help your wife out here. You need a Peloton tread because the content is as engaging as the bike content. Therefore, it’s so much more fun to run on than a regular treadmill. Especially if you hold out for the Tread+ coming back because that is on the horizon. The slats are better on the knees than pounding the pavement all the time. If you want to live longer and have those knees last longer, I’m just throwing that out there.

The knee thing is interesting. I can buy into the fact secretly behind the scenes while she’s not here that the experience would be a plus, much better than a regular treadmill. That was the thing that sold me on the Peloton. It was a good workout. It was safe. It was good for my knees and my back, but I could be as competitive as I wanted to be. Still to this day, I am recovering from the day before something else and telling myself, “I’m going to take an easy ride.” I get on and I do five minutes of easy, and then I can’t help but crank it up. The experience would not surprise me at all to be much better than a regular treadmill.

What do you think keeps you coming back to the bike? I know that you like to be able to not worry about your injuries, but is there something about the content specifically that hooks you in?

You think about the ’80s when they had the cliche workout videos that people would do. We both always talked about that felt awkward and it works for some people but that was never us. If you find good instructors and you vibe with an instructor, the music is there, and you get the motivation, it reminds me of being back in team sports and having been in it together. You can see the audience now that we are post-COVID that’s participating in the ride.

You have the energy of the instructor. It’s that whole thing and the fact that it’s not a cheap screen. It’s a nice big screen. The speakers are good for music and everything. You can zone out with everything else that’s going on in life in general and be focused and feel like you are a part of something with a broader bigger group. That’s a big part of it for me.

As a computer tech guy, I didn’t think about that, but the quality of the physical equipment is important to you, and some of the other brands might cheap out a little bit. We don’t want to name any names because we would hate to embarrass Echelon, but I’m sure that helps a lot.

On that note, in a world of developing things, do you find yourself nitpicking or wishing Peloton would do certain things? Do you put yourself in work mode? When Tom goes to a concert, he’s in work mode. I have to wonder if you do the same thing.

I don’t have any particular gripes with Peloton. If I had them, I would openly share. I do pay a lot of attention to user experience with websites and stuff. As a web developer myself, I know how difficult or how easy things are to do, and how certain experiences honestly shouldn’t be acceptable to put a user through. I am very sensitive to that in general.

It’s one of those things where a great experience is less likely to be noticed than a poor experience. At the very least from my perspective, the fact that I don’t have anything to complain about from a user end perspective, application perspective, and hardware perspective is a significant plus. People will always be loud with negative feedback. I posted something on Twitter that’s completely unrelated to something that’s not working and how frustrating it is because I love their products. When the thing doesn’t work, that’s the thing that holds you back. The fact that I have nothing negative to say speaks a lot about the experience.

People rarely ask for a manager to say, “Great job.”

Nobody ever does that. I shouldn’t say nobody. As far as your day job goes, what does being a Java developer look like? How did you get into being a speaker and a teacher?

Fun fact. Java and JavaScript are two very different things. It took me a couple of years. It’s fun to think about the outside perspective of how similar those things are.

This is new information for me. I will tell you that. I found out it wasn’t coffee.

They embrace the coffee logo if that helps. I got into college specifically into the engineering department and I had no idea what to study. I had to choose something before I got there. I had no idea what to do. I didn’t want to do physics. I didn’t want to do chemistry at all. I didn’t want biomed and all these things. I didn’t know anything about computer science and programming. I chose it because it sounded the most fun, and it worked out for me.

Microsoft recruited me on campus during my senior year. I got to meet them and interview for two positions that I got turned down from. One of which I flew to DC in person for interviews and it was a group of 60 of us. All the people who got rejected and got sent back to the hotel in a limo, which was very awkward or like several limos. It’s supposed to be a cool experience because you are in a limo but you are all very sad that you flew all the way to DC to not get a job.

Technically at a funeral, you are in a limo.

Maybe it’s never an exciting time. I don’t know. I got turned on twice and then they asked me if I would be interested in a technical evangelist position, which from your perspective you probably never heard of and you probably laugh and chuck a lot. Especially at that time, that title was not nearly as common. It’s changed a little bit now, but people didn’t know what that was, including myself. I was like, “I don’t know what that is, but sure. It’s Microsoft.”

What it became was a mix of technical writing code and things like that combined with community engagement, public speaking, leading workshops, and all those sorts of things. What I didn’t realize at the time, I never thought about ever in my life was I loved teaching people through content, videos, public speaking, workshops, in-person, and guest lectures, that sorts of stuff. I fell in love with that.

I transitioned away from that. I did regular software development for a couple of years and was missing it. I started creating content again. I was going to pay for myself to speak at conferences and decided if I was going to do this, I might as well have companies pay for me to do it. I got back into that type of role at a couple of smaller startups, and then I have been doing content creation for myself full-time for a little over a year now.

You made your role fit. You did something, went away from it, and then realized you liked it and then made a way to make it work. I like that. That’s very inspiring all in and of itself.

It’s a nice combination of the stereotypical developer who sits in a dungeon and doesn’t talk to people and doesn’t have friends and stuff. It’s very different. I’m pretty extroverted. It’s interesting to be on the speaker circuit where you have a group of friends and you go to 5, 6, 7, 8, or 10 conferences a year and you get to reunite with people.

It’s almost like summer camp or going back to school for the first day. You get to see people for the first time or a handful of months for the first time that year. It becomes a very social thing. I’m a big advocate of in your career, especially in the tech ecosystem, embracing the community and being involved in the community can lead to an infinite number of opportunities and networking. It’s a great balance for me of being technical but also having the social aspects of being around people, and then continuing to grow myself professionally as a speaker as I do higher speaking engagements.

I bet there are a lot of calls for someone that can take information like this that’s probably pretty dense and a little dry and convert it to something that’s both palatable and comprehensible to people like us.

That’s been one of my superpowers in my career, especially in a job that doesn’t lean on or expect you to have those skills to be able to communicate to upper management and people who are less technical and be that bridge between much more technical people and less technical people. It has certainly played out well for me in my career.

How do you make a living? Is it just speaker fees or does the YouTube channel have ads? I’m not trying to ask you to show me a W-9 or anything, but how does that function from you got to pay the rent?

I’m happy to share any numbers. I’m very transparent if you are curious. In general, I have made proportionally relatively little off speaker fees. That’s one of the things I’m looking to continue to build as a segment of things that I do. The majority that I make comes from sponsored YouTube videos. I built an audience of almost 200,000 subscribers at this point. I get a lot of requests to highlight my product or show my product to your audience and that sort of thing. I have done a ton of that and I’m restructuring how I do that.

I have made good money doing that. I love doing it. I love learning new products, meeting new people, and meeting new teams. It also is a great networking thing for me, but I’m also building up consulting as well. From a video perspective, specifically YouTube strategy for companies, and then also from what I call developer experience, which is people or companies that create products for developers like myself, giving them feedback and strategy on how to best iterate on their products and have it be the most successful thing that they can. There are three main parts there. One is speaking. One is sponsored content typically on YouTube. The other is consulting, and the last thing is creating your own paid content like courses. I will be releasing a course assuming all things go well. That’s the fourth outlet.

Consistency gives you the ability to give yourself an opportunity for more visibility. The longer and the more you produce, the more chances you have for higher visibility. Share on X

You do a lot of things then. I’m curious how you handle the project management side of things because I come from a project management background. I know what I do because I have a real job and then I do this. There’s a lot that goes into all these different things when you are creating content and setting up those meetings and having those conversations. How do you keep all that organized?

I will be honest. I’m not the most organized person by far. If you were to ask me about my strengths, that’s never the thing that I would highlight. I also have relatively lower attention to detail than a lot of people. This is a struggle for me and what people don’t necessarily think about and what I like to share with people is working for yourself all the time, especially in the content creation space, we wear a lot of hats.

I do video, audio, lighting, video editing, technical pieces, marketing on social media, running a newsletter, and running a Discord. You are responsible for all these things, in addition to invoicing and emails. To your point of setting up meet and greets with potential sponsors and learning about products and stuff. It is a lot.

The number one thing for me or a couple of things that are important is I’m always a timeline person. Even if it’s last minute, I will still get the job done and I will do a good job by the time the thing is done. I also am trying to pay a lot more attention to the things not necessarily that I’m not that good at, although that’s part of it, but the things that take more time for me than it would for someone else to do and specifically takes away from the time that I would otherwise use working on things that I enjoy more. The outcome of that is trying to build a team around me to take care of some of the things that I’m not as good at or don’t necessarily have the time to do. That’s important to be able to recognize those aspects and try to bring in help to support that.

How do you manage to create such a large YouTube presence in a relatively short amount of time? That’s an impressive number of YouTube subscribers.

Consistency is always the number one thing. Most people are interested in doing something like YouTube. They are scared to start and they want to be perfect. That’s one of the benefits of not being the most detail-oriented person. That means that I’m much more comfortable publishing a video that’s 90% of the way done or let’s say 40% of the effort gets you 90% of the way done. You could put in an additional 60%, but you have to look at what’s the return on that additional 60%.

Because I’m not the most detail-oriented person, I’m more comfortable releasing something that’s not perfect. What that means is I have more opportunities by staying consistent with videos that get picked up and do well based on the algorithm and people respond to. I used to watch videos from other people’s YouTube growth and they would show their stats. You would see these individual spikes of individual videos every once in a while that would take off. They would carry the channel through a period of growth.

I had my first real spike from a video a few years ago and that led to the amount of visibility and stuff after that. It was higher than it was beforehand, and then I would have another one and it continued to grow with those spikes. Again, the consistency gives you the ability to give yourself an opportunity for more of that visibility. The more you produce, the more chances you have for higher visibility.

A big challenge and sometimes frustrating, but also the key to this, is your content can be good, but if you are not packaging it in a way that people care, they don’t care. Unfortunately, what that leads to is what we think of as clickbait stuff in a negative way, where you see people advertise something on a thumbnail. You go and watch a video and it doesn’t have anything to do with that, but it was so enticing that you clicked.

That’s the bad thing. What you can do is bring somebody in and then not provide the value that you promised, but you can start to get creative on what’s the messaging, what’s the thumbnail, and what’s the reason that someone scrolls thousands of YouTube videos a day, which I do. What’s going to make them choose your video? Starting to pay attention to that and tweak that was one of the big difference makers for me.

I have a curious question. I see all the time people who get attention for their videos because they act big with their faces. I’m trying to say it carefully. It’s like a huge pet peeve of mine, but that’s what gets attention. Is that the only way that people tend to cut through the clutter? Can you truly be successful without doing all the faces, the big fonts, and the red backgrounds? Is that possible?

Possible, yes. People do it because it works. I don’t look through my channel and get super excited about the faces that I make in thumbnails. It’s not a natural thing for me either. When you look back through and see results, it’s a balance. It’s not like I’m selling myself out. It’s not a big negative thing. I feel awkward about it, but I’m not becoming a different person. I’m trying to put that marketing package to spin on it to draw attention.

Yes, it can. There are a few different things on an individual video of how people gauge what they watch. One, is it a person that I intimately trust? I have watched so much of their content in the past and I know I like their content so much. I know I want to see their take on this specific thing, this new feature that got created, or a new product.

There are also people who are scrolling and have no idea what they are looking for. Out of those hundreds of things that they could watch, what is the thing that’s going to make them relate? You have to be intentional about that, and that’s marketing across the board. The downside is the fact that sometimes if you don’t do that, you do get overlooked.

There is good content that doesn’t get visibility because it doesn’t create that urgency for someone to click on the video. It is an interesting and challenging balance to find. To stay authentic to yourself, your audience, and the content that you create, and then also try to play the game to get visibility and grow because no one wants to create something that no one watches. It’s much more fun if people watch and tweaking the things you do to try to get there is a good thing and mainly necessary.

That’s an interesting conversation that Tom and I chat through. We go on tangents about that all the time. With all your speaking engagements that you have and the different conferences that you go to, do you find yourself traveling a lot?

A decent amount. I am not the person who tries to speak at everything that I can. Especially as I’m trying to up the tier of speaking engagements that I have, I’m trying to be more selective. A couple of things play into that. Before getting to a certain level of speaking, not everything is paid for. Going out on your own means that the money comes out of my pocket potentially to speak, depending on the specific engagement.

The other thing is my wife and I had our first child, so we have a baby at home. It’s a reason not to be gone too long. The fun thing for me and my wife was my wife works in tech at a company that I previously worked at. She does events and sponsorships for that company, which means that things they might sponsor that she might go to, I might also speak at.

We have had joint trips that are paid for on either side where we get to go and travel to Europe together and take a few days, or if one of us is going to work, the other will pay for the other and have a vacation to do that. That’s been a nice combination. In general, I try not to travel too much. I like being at home, having my routines, having my Peloton, and being able to control what I eat instead of having to eat out every day. For me, some years it’s been maybe a max of once a month for something like that and this year is probably more like 5 or 6.

When you are traveling, are you an app user or are you able to find Pelotons out in the wild? Is that relatively easy?

I haven’t tried looking for Pelotons specifically. I have been doing the new gym workouts. I have taken those with me to gyms at the hotel and done that a few times.

I don’t know how close attention you paid to Peloton. I don’t know if you know this, but I pay close attention. Their new partnership with Hilton has been great because they have a bike at every Hilton now, at least one. They also expanded that to the UK and there are other countries that they have expanded that to as well. That might be helpful for you in the future.

I am a loyal Hilton person. Unless somebody is booking my hotel for me and it’s not a Hilton, it will always be a Hilton for me. That’s good to know.

I saw on your website that you are a strong proponent of work-life balance and the pursuit of personal happiness. I’m curious what each of those look like in your life with everything you have going on including trying to continue to stay fit since that’s so important to you.

A lot of it goes back to paying attention to the things that you enjoy on a daily basis and trying to do more of those and less of the things that you don’t enjoy. I have been in situations specifically at FedEx where the culture was very old and uninspiring. It was very much people who have been working at FedEx for 15 or 20 years. They were going to work there until they retired, and life/career was never going to get any better.

It’s sad for me because especially as a programmer, you can make a lot more money. In my career specifically, I have almost tripled the amount of money that I have made over the course of 2 or 3 years just from moving out of somewhere that had a much older culture and moving into younger startups, and then going out on my own.

First and foremost for me is always happiness. That means time spent with my wife. It means having time to workout. It means woodworking, which I have gotten into from YouTube videos. It means cooking. It means all these different things that I know I enjoy and paying attention to those and making sure I prioritize having time for that.

Happiness is number one. Make sure you prioritize having all those things. Also, I’m very transparent about this and very outspoken about this. Number two, my priority is making a lot of money while I do it because that enables me to continue to do more of the things that I enjoy and for us to travel and do all these things that we would like to do.

My happiness is always the number one priority. That comes with work-life balance. Work-life balance is important because I am more than what I get paid to do. I have hobbies, interests, and a family. I have all these things that I want to do. I would see this working at Microsoft, specifically for people who didn’t have a spouse at home or a partner. They would work late. They would stay at 5:00 or whatever it was. It’s not that I didn’t like what I was doing. I just wanted to do other things that I also liked.

It’s having that hard cutoff and being able to prioritize. I love doing these other things. I’m not going to sacrifice that. I’m going to continue to work hard in my career, progress in my career, and make different changes to continue to do that. Ideally combining that with making good money is what gets me excited because it enables me to continue to do more of that. That’s been very important for me in all of my professional career. That’s a lot of what I speak about now in the talks that I give.

It’s super important to be able to live your life in a way that you get to enjoy. We only get one. That is very important. Tom and I love to travel. We don’t get to do it as much as we would like to, but we love it and make it a priority as well.

It was so convenient for us to have one of us be paid for. We went to Europe four times, one of which we both went separately for different things by ourselves. We went to Europe three times together, which is just a fortunate position to be in to have one of them be paid for and then have the ability to pay for the other one for us to tag along and make a trip out of it.

What is your leaderboard name?

This gets into a branding conversation. It’s very important for me to have a brand and have the same name across everything. Not that people in my industry are looking for me on Peloton necessarily, although I’m connected to a few people. It’s JamesQQuick. I had to embrace Q as my middle initial in addition to Quick being my last name. There’s a football player who played at Louisville in the US and then went to the NFL named James Quick. If you search for him, he does better at SEO, so I embraced my middle initial. Everything that I do anywhere is JamesQQuick.

It’s a very smart way to pivot away from what could be a potential problem.

We will be sure to put it in the title of the episode that way.

I almost feel a little obnoxious to telling people that it should be there, but it is a very intentional thing.

We don’t want to pull people in and expect us to talk to the football player.

It is a very different story, I would think.

If he stumbles across this, we are more than happy to talk to you if you use Peloton. Do you have a preferred instructor?

Alex Toussaint is my favorite by far. Almost exclusively, I’m not doing multiple times a week, so they are relatively spread out. He has plenty of content when I get back on the bike. His energy reminds me of being an athlete in high school working with athletes in college and being around all of that. He does the Club Bangers if you have seen that.

He makes the analogy of, “I feel like I’m back in college.” He does this whole thing where you are warming up. You are getting ready to walk into the club. You get your first drink. You are hyping up a little bit, and then at the end, you do your wind down as you are the last song walking out of the club. That’s a cool analogy, but I love his energy. For him to be so loud at times, I feel like I’m being yelled at and need to do better in such a good way, going back to the experience and that being a big part of the instructors playing into that experience for me. He’s my priority number one.

I have to help your wife out again. He does teach on the tread. I just wanted to let you know that.

I’m not surprised.

She’s not on commission believe it or not.

If you have an affiliate link, feel free to send it to her.

Will do.

Do you have any advice for people who are now entering the world of Peloton?

Lean into it. I’m a big advocate. I talked about a lot in my professional career about the benefit of the community. Being a part of seeing people that are going through something that you are going through and understanding it’s not just you. I have also taught career changers getting into tech who have no background in tech. They are completely learning from scratch.

It’s one of those things where most of us as adults are not used to being at the bottom of the barrel, like starting something that we have never done before. This is what I tell people. Breaking into tech, going through a programming bootcamp, and trying to go through that transition is one of the hardest things that you will never do in your life because you are not used to being in that situation. I see the people who are most successful are the people who connect with other people in their cohorts.

They engage in Discord communities. They go to meetups. They do all these things. It is not that I’m not trying to change people’s lives by being involved in Peloton. If you want to make the most out of it, being involved in the community, whether that’s my wife is on a Facebook group for postpartum Peloton. There’s a catchy name to it, so whatever that name is, but she does that.

She has a group in which she’s not super active, but she sees people ask similar questions to things that she’s going through and gets to see their responses. That makes her feel more connected and more knowledgeable understanding that other people are going through this transition of giving birth and then having to earn back what was something she’d worked her entire life for being an athlete. It’s a very challenging thing. That helps her to feel connected to that.

I haven’t done a great job of this, so this is do what I say, not what I do or whatever the phrase is. Connecting with friends, seeing names on the leaderboard, and finding a way to be competitive with them. If I can get friends that I can talk trash to and use that as motivation on both of our ends, that’s a plus for me. A lot of the things that I talk about in my career about being involved in the community, embracing the community, and being a part of it, still apply here. It certainly played out, especially for my wife.

The people that are most successful are the people that connect with other people. Share on X

That is good advice. I love all that.

James, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. We don’t want to disrupt your work-life balance so we are going to let you go. Before we do, let everybody know where they can find you on social media, your website, and all the places.

It’s JamesQQuick across the board. I run a YouTube channel, which is probably my biggest audience. I’m most active on Twitter. I spend a lot of time there. Personal website, JamesQQuick.com. If anybody is interested in breaking into the tech space world, I run a Discord server that’s called Learn Build Teach. This has been a motto of mine.

In tech, we spend a lot of time learning. We use what we learn to build stuff like an application for a Peloton. You teach other people to do that too for two different reasons. One, you benefit the community. They can learn from your mistakes and all that stuff, but also selfishly, the best way to learn is to teach. If you think you understand something, teaching it to someone else will help you get a good idea of whether or not you understand it. If anyone is interested in that space, you can find that at LearnBuildTeach.com and JamesQQuick across the board.

Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

—

I guess that brings this episode to a close. Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can find me on any of the socials and the leaderboard @ClipOutCrystal.

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

 

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