340. Peloton Changes Studio Class Booking Process, Plus Our Interview With Austin Allison!

Last Updated: December 15, 2023By Tags: , , , , ,

TCO 340 | Picasso Homes

 

  • Changes are coming to the studio class booking system.
  • Peloton adds a new class filter option.
  • Music options now showing during live classes.
  • Tread having technical issues.
  • Stay calm!
  • No live classes 12/23-1/1.
  • Jon Hosking in a commercial for Crystal Palace FC.
  • Susie Chan finished 6th female in 10-mile race and was highlighted by Strava.
  • Instructor quote t-shirts dropped this week.
  • Charlotte Weidenbach celebrates her second Peloton anniversary.
  • Jenn – How to give a true 100% for your workout.
  • The latest artist series features Run DMC.
  • Anya Adams lands producing/director gig on Netflix show.
  • J. Albertson sets his sights on the Olympics.
  • TCO Top Five.
  • New row, strength, and pilates classes.
  • Kristin McGee to teach her first Magic Circle Pilates class.
  • Peloton’s Hip Hop 50 Tour (w)raps up with the East Coast.
  • New levels on Lanebreak.
  • The next 2-hour Power Zone ride will be in January.
  • Birthdays – Camila Ramon (12/18)

All this plus our interview with Austin Allison!

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Peloton Changes Studio Class Booking Process, Plus Our Interview With Austin Allison!

I think we’ve been back long enough now that we no longer have the fake British accents.

They were scrubbed from our system. We have been re-Americanized.

I used an elevator the other day and I called it an elevator. I started ordering French fries again, not chips.

We’ve been eating potato chips and they’re not crisps.

I don’t smoke because…

Never mind. Leave it.

I can’t say that one. We got it all out of our system.

Kimberly AKA Holly Yoga tagged me in a story on Instagram and she said “That’s crazy” in English, but then she said, “AKA proper mental.” Keep them coming. I love it. She’s going to be so chuffed to hear that.

You need a whole cheat sheet of things.

It’s so fun.

It would be nice if you could change your keyboard to autocorrect to UK English. Instead of an emoji, it flips it to British slang. You’d be chuffed.

Let me give it a sniff and see if I can find anything like that.

We did our book club and we have the next book.

To wrap up, the name of it was Evvie Drake Starts Over. Our next book is Book Lovers by Emily Henry. That’s our January book. You can start reading it anytime. We’re going to have a meeting on January 9th. at 7:00 PM Central, 8:00 PM Eastern. We already picked the February book and I am so excited. It’ll be our first instructor book. We are going to be talking about Turning Inward by Ross Rayburn. For that one, the meeting will be on February 13th at 7:00 PM Central, 8:00 PM Eastern.

That will be Valentine’s Day Eve. We don’t have something planned.

Will you even be here? Won’t you be at Pollstar or something?

No, it’s the week before.

Usually, you’re gone every Valentine’s Day, but I wanted to tell everybody that Ross Rayburn’s book is available for pre-order right now. I believe it comes out at the end of December.

I think it was January 9th when I looked up.

If you pre-order it right now, he has all these little extras you can get including attending a webinar with him. I want to make sure that we let everybody know about that because we’re big Ross supporters around here.

What pray tell do you have in store for people?

We have our interview with Austin Allison. He is going to tell us about this very interesting concept called Home Sharing or something. Just wait for the interview. It’s by a company called Pacaso. Not the artist. Trust me. It’s fascinating even if you have no interest in doing it. We’re not going to be doing it but it’s interesting.

It’s interesting that this is what the real estate market is doing.

He rides a Peloton and all of these Pacaso homes also have Pelotons. There’s a lot of science here. We also are going to be talking about all the things going on with Peloton. Some changes have come to the booking system. They have new features we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about the technical issues with the Tread. if you’ve been experiencing issues, we’ve got you. Also, we’re going to talk about what the schedule is going to look like for the rest of December. We have some instructor news. We also have a visit from Dr. Jenn, how to give a true 100% for your workout. We’ll talk about the artist series. We have past guest updates, a little very unexpected competitor news, and some content updates as well.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. All the places you get a podcast you can find us. While you’re there, be sure and follow us so you never miss an episode. Maybe leave us a review. It’s super helpful. We greatly appreciate it. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. We’re on Patreon at Patreon.com/TheClipOut, where for $5 a month, you can get all sorts of bonus content. What are we talking about for this week?

We are going to be talking about Stacy Sims, specifically cold plunge for women because it is a different temperature and how you need to approach it if you are a woman versus a man. It’s super fascinating. We have a lot more instructor updates over there that didn’t make the cut over here.

You get all that for $5 a month, plus you get the episodes ad-free. If we get them early, you get them early, and all sorts of extra stuff that we haven’t thought of yet. There’s a free tier. All the book club stuff is part of the Patreon which you can join for free and get the links and access to the book club stuff. You can also find us on YouTube at YouTube.com/TheClipOut, where you can watch these episodes. Finally, don’t forget our newsletter at TheClipOut.com. There’s all that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

—

We have some changes coming to the studio class booking system.

if you’re unfamiliar, you have to go to a separate website to book a class if you want to take it in the studio. It’s Studio.OnePeloton.com. When you get there, the way that it’s traditionally worked is that you go in and buy credits, and then when you book a class, you apply the credits that are in your account. You don’t have to do that first, but if you didn’t and you tried to check out, you will never going to get that class.

It’s kind of a vestige of a bygone era. It’s the system in place before it was so hard to get classes and they had never acknowledged that that system doesn’t work in the new environment.

My guess is they probably had a contract with whoever provided that service. It started on Monday, December 11th through the 13th. The website was not working because they were doing this new upgrade and then on Thursday, there will be a pay-as-you-go class purchase model. That means that when you book, you don’t have to get the class credit. It means that you check out like you would anything else that you would buy. This is amazing. What this means is you’re only going to be able to book one class at a time. If you want to book more than one class, you’re going to have to book a class and do it again.

You throw three classes in your cart. They’re not leggings, people.

Not today. I can’t help but think though that in the future, there will be additional changes.

I think maybe they want to log jam you a little bit so you can’t be like, “I’ll take this class, this class, and this class.”

We’ll see which of us is right.

It’s typically you.

The other thing that I want to make sure that you know is that any credits that you had sitting in your system already will migrate over. You’ll still have however much time you have left on those credits. Any credits that you purchased before, you had one year to use from the date that you purchased them, which was tough because if you couldn’t get into a class, now you just hope for the best and they did not like to refund to them. That was a big pain in the butt. This is a huge upgrade to the class booking system. They’ve been doing a lot of things. I told you guys about how there are new colors. There are lines that you have to stand in. They do all that differently now. They keep making changes to that. We will see what happens.

Let me ask you a question designed to inspire panic.

Okay. Good.

Before, you bought the credit and then you used the credit on whatever class you wanted. Now you throw the class in the cart and you pay at checkout. Do you think there comes a time when different classes cost different amounts like yoga is $20, a bike class is $40, and Turkey Burn is $75?

Lord, help us all if it does.

I just like to get people upset for no reason and give them something to worry about that hasn’t happened yet.

It’s a good way to do that.

That’s what I’m here for. My gut tells me no because the amount of revenue generated is so small in the grand scheme of things. It feels like a dick move for the purpose of making a dick move. I mean never say never, I suppose.

If they were to do true concierge service where it was like, “For a weekend, we’ll book all these classes for you. You’re going to get booked in this hotel,” I would pay so much money for that. That is such an obvious money-making scheme, but if the idea is to get as many different people in as many seats as possible, none of that we talked about will be helpful. All you’re doing is stratifying it so people with money can do it, and people that don’t have money can’t do it. That’s all you’re going to do.

I will say this as someone who prices tickets for a living.

I’m saying that’s not necessarily their goal, but you’re trying to maximize revenue.

What I was saying is if you carve out for this concierge that you’re envisioning, you would probably only have to carve out 4 or 5 seats a class. You take a sliver of that inventory or all of a sudden, Bike 6 costs more than Bike 17.

You go back to the bike that you picked like the VIP package. We are building a concierge service for you. Included in the concierge service should be Bikes 1 and 2, and you get those. You should be able to pick two because you’re not going to want to go without your friend. You should get two as part of this deal, and then you should get a very nice stay in a hotel that also has a Peloton. You should book it with some massage afterward and lovely healthy meals, which you guys have tons of there, and then somebody to wait on you the entire time. I think this is amazing. I got this all set up.

Also, a place with Coke Zero for the husbands.

If you could fix your hot chocolate, that would be great.

I don’t know how the hot chocolate is at the New York Studio, but in the London Studio, it was brown water. Peloton is adding a new class filter option. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but it was still rolling out at the time we recorded. Now it has rolled out.

I think we only talked about it on the bonus episode. I’m not sure we talked about it here.

We’re not talking about anything anymore.

Now, cool-downs and warm-ups have been separated. It’s so annoying when you want to find a cool down and all you can find are warm-ups and vice versa. It’s much faster to have them all in one place. I’m glad to see that.

We should talk a little bit about the Tread was having some technical difficulties.

It still is. Who knows if it will be by the time you hear this, but I’ve been hearing this for over a week. I’m assuming it’s not going to be fixed by the time you hear this. It doesn’t seem to be the Tread+ and I only say that because I have not experienced this issue, but when you put your tread to sleep, it won’t go to sleep.

It’s like a five-year-old.

Even worse, it throws a tantrum and it starts blinking angry red at you. According to Peloton chats that people have had if you hold down the stop button, it will eventually go to sleep. Other people say, “Screw it,” and they just turn it off at the base. I don’t know which would technically be better. Peloton is aware. They’re working on a fix but who knows when that’ll occur.

While we’re on the subject of issues, I should probably let everybody know that I’ve been seeing for weeks now and I keep thinking it’s fixed because I’m not having the problem. I don’t know if this is an iPhone different model or program-specific problem, but on my iPhone, I have no issues with the Peloton widget. Other people are saying, and this has been going on for months for some people, that their widget will not work, All of a sudden, it doesn’t track anything and if they try to open Peloton through the widget, close everything, start over, or they update, none of those work. I have no idea why and I don’t understand why it’s only affecting some people but it’s out there.

Those are two issues. I will say I don’t think that’s a Peloton thing that needs to be fixed. I think that’s an iPhone thing that needs to be fixed. Did I tell you about the crazy alarm or the ghost alarm that is happening on this lady’s iPhone? She had this alarm set for 9:30 in the morning. She deleted it and it kept going off. She took it to the Apple Store. They can’t fix it. They’ve restarted her phone. They gave her a new phone but transferred everything over, but the ghost alarm came with it. This has been going on for this poor woman for five years. Nobody can fix it. Everybody has tried. That‘s what I meant by I think this is a very weird Apple glitch when it comes to our Peloton widget not working.

That’s crazy. Is that like someone you talk or is it an article?

That was an article.

Five years, I’d be like, “Welcome to Google Pixel.”

Some people are saying she needs to do a complete factory reset, but she is unwilling to let everything go. Another person said that the only way you could fix it is to go in and add a manual mute that overrides alarms for that one minute.

That’s what I was thinking. Can you mute to put the alarm on silence? It goes off, but it doesn’t make noise and then when you’re like, “It’s 9:32. It’s been going off,” click. Still, you shouldn’t have to. Earlier in the episode, I induced panic. Now, we’re going to do our part to reduce panic. That’s what I do. I give and take. It’s the yin and yang of me. Just a friendly reminder, the studio will be closed or no live classes from December 23rd through January 1st.

It’s true. They will be closed, but new classes will drop on demand daily. Will it be classes you care about? I don’t know.

Who knows if the live classes are going to be classes you care about?

You all know the drill. You know this happens every year. If you see somebody complaining, you can tell them that, but I also know it’s exhausting and I’ve given up. I only tell you, guys.

Coming up after this, we have instructors in the news so stick around.

—

Ben Alldis had a fun moment.

His book Raise The Bar was on the Amazon Books’ billboard in New York City. How cool is that? That’s so neat. I sure would love to have something show up in Times Square in New York.

Write a book and then Amazon will put it on the billboard for you.

It has nothing to do with him being a Peloton instructor.

Just write a book.

I’m on it.

Jon Hosking was in a commercial for Crystal Palace FC or a football club.

Congrats to Jon Hosking. This little commercial looks fun.

Susie Chan did a 10-mile trail race and came in sixth for women.

She said in her post, “It was gale winds and rain that was so hard. It felt like stones hitting you, and right at the end, the sun broke through.” I have done a trail run right after it rained. The mud was so awful. It’s that one I did in the woods and I came out of it. The mud was so deep and the hills were so steep. You would slide down and hope for the best that you didn’t crash into somebody. It was awful.

You were so covered in mud that I thought you were running for office.

She looks tidy. How did she do that?

That’s what she’s saying, “The sun came out for the picture.”

She’s like, “It was a mess.” I took one of her classes and she was saying that she was going to be doing some of these shorter distances. She was also saying how hard it is for her to run fast. She’s good at running, she calls it slow but I know better. It’s relative. She was saying how hard it is for her to run fast. For her to get sixth for female, that’s awesome. Congrats.

While we’re speaking of Susie, she was featured by Strava.

They were giving her props for being the first European woman to have completed the three major races in the Badwater series. They talked about her training level and how amazing it was. I don’t know if you guys follow Susie on Strava, but it is inspiring and humbling. She got the Activity of the Year nominee.

Congrats. Also, if you can’t get enough of your instructors, the apparel line puts out instructor-quote t-shirts. Everybody loves some instructor-quote apparel. Is it still out there?

There are some sizes left for each instructor. The small and the mediums are gone, or at least they were the day I bought them. They were going so fast. I couldn’t get my size but I got Denis, Wilpers, Club Hosky, Ben Alldis, and Adrian. I was excited about that. Matt Wilpers was still saying coming soon. Cody is not my thing. I would never wear that shirt. There’s no point in me getting it. I didn’t want anyone to think I was being mean. I’m not. It’s just not my jam.

We have a Peloton anniversary.

Happy anniversary to Charlotte or Dr. Weidenbach. Isn’t that cool? That was anniversary number two for her. The German anniversaries are in full swing for this month.

—

Joining us is Dr. Jenn Mann, a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist, and sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, or her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She has written four bestselling books including The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection, and Intimacy, it’s Dr. Jenn.

Hello.

I am glad to have you here. I have a question for you. The last few weeks when we’ve been talking about different things like being tough or having motivation, you’ve mentioned a lot of tricks that people can do. A lot of it has to do with self-talk. Is there a way to trick yourself and give 100% on a workout that you know you need to do because it’s going to get you the result you want, but it’s hard to push to 100%? I’m going to talk about sprint interval training where you do an all-out sprint as hard as you can for 30 seconds, and then you back off for 90 seconds to chill and calm your system, and then you keep doing that repeatedly, but it’s hard to push to a hundred percent. How do you get yourself in that headspace to do it?

The first question is, “Do you have to do it 100%?” I know that seems like a weird question, but sometimes part of our job as an athlete is to pace ourselves and to look at, “I’m going to be doing 30 minutes of intervals. I’m not going to come out of the gate hot and I’m not going to do my speed as high as I can because I know I want to save some gasoline for the ride at the end of this 30-minute workout.” The first question to ask is, “Is it beneficial? Is it necessary? Will it help you or are you doing something that might hurt you, injure you, or burn you out?”

That’s the first thing. Do an assessment and go, “I’m someone who likes to do things 100%. Is that the the right choice here?” First is the assessment. Let’s say you say, “Yes. I’ve consulted with a professional trainer. This is the right thing to do. It’s within the appropriate level for where I am in my fitness, and this is something that will help me reach my goal.” If that is the case, there are a few things I recommend. The first is visualization. If this is coming up in advance, start doing some visualization.

Let’s say that interval sprints are something that ongoing is something that’s challenging. You feel like, “This is the big picture. I need to work on this.” Start doing nightly visualization of you doing the sprint. This is a little controversial, but the study shows that doing visualization from the point of view of inside your body is more affected. With that said, I personally don’t like it as much. I would like to be able to have more of a bird’s eye view when I do visualizations. When I did it as an elite-level gymnast, I worked hard after reading that study to do it from the inside out. For me personally, looking at the bird’s eye view was more effective.

Do you mean like envisioning yourself on a movie screen versus looking out of your own eyes? This is a bad analogy. You’re going to hate it but I’m a first-person shooter.

Let’s say it’s a treadmill class. If you’re seeing it from your own perspective, you’re seeing the screen in front of you. Looking down, you’re seeing your feet. You see your arms moving. If you’re doing it from a bird’s eye view, you’re seeing it from the perspective of someone standing somewhere else in the room looking at you. You can see your head.

What I recommend is doing nightly visualization. Take yourself through the sprints. Take yourself through that moment when you feel like, “I don’t know if I can go on,” and imagine yourself getting a second wind. Imagine yourself having success. Imagine yourself finding the reserves and continuing to go fast in that sprint.

Visualization is incredibly powerful and Incredibly underrated. I remember in grad school reading this incredible study about visualization where they had people do free throws. They had one group that did visualization, one group that did the actual free throws, one group that did visualizations and free throws, and one that did nothing. What they found was the one who did visualization and the free throws killed it. They did the best, followed not by the ones who did the practice but f followed by the ones who did the visualization.

Visualization is even more powerful than doing the actual activity. Visualization is like anything else in life. You have to train it to get good at it. If you do good visualization, you will feel your muscles twitch. The more you do it, the more you start to notice that because your muscles are having the experience with you. The mind is incredibly powerful. I worked with elite-level athletes who do this and you would be stunned at the results.

That explains why Crystal and I are together because when we first started going out, we were doing some visualization.

That clearly paid off.

I’m so glad Dr. Jenn has a sense of humor.

She would be long gone if she did not. Thank you so much for all that. Until next time, where can people find you?

On social @DrJennMann.

Thank you.

—

We have a new artist series this time spotlighting Run DMC.

Classes start on December 14th. There’s going to be a ton of them. There’s going to be four here and then I know there was a bunch. They all drop on the 14th, depending on if they are live. It’s like seven different classes. That’s a fun one. Do you remember I told you I was doing those outdoor runs and there was one for each borough? The Queens borough had Run DMC in it. That was a fun playlist.

Coming up after this, we’re going to have some past guest updates and some good news for them. We’re going to give you some ideas for classes you should take or make sure to not miss. Stick around.

—

CJ Albertson apparently has his sights set on the Olympics.

You might remember that I told you that he won the California International Marathon last week. This past week, he went to the Baja California Marathon and he was the winner there. This time, he came in at 11.08. Last week was 11.09. He got another PR. If he finishes in the top three Olympic Marathon trials in Orlando on February 3rd, he will be eligible for selection for the US Olympic team. That is super exciting. I get goosebumps when I think about it. What a year he’s having.

Speaking of good news for past guests.

You might remember that we had Anya Adams on the show. Is she considered a director or a writer? I always mixed those up.

She has directed lots of television shows but it sounds like in this case, she’s going to produce and direct.

I didn’t know she was doing both. She’s going to lead the Netflix show that’s coming out. It’s going to be a comedy series and she was confirmed as the producer and director. There’s a whole bunch of other people that are part of this but I think this is cool. She’s going to get her own producer and director credit for it.

I don’t know if that makes her like an unnamed showrunner or how that works because if she’s the producer and director, that’s pretty high-level. Either way, this is great news for her. Congrats.

I can’t wait. Huge congrats. We’ll be watching for it.

—

Of all people, IKEA has entered the fitness space.

I did not see this coming.

That is if you want your bike to be hard to put together.

We had some jokes about this. Helper Bee Nikki said this to me earlier in the week and Tom immediately said, ”Can you imagine putting that bike together?”

That’s the workout.

“They are nineteen versatile products that support movement in everyday life that enable people to create healthy habits at home.” It’s a new series called something that starts with a D.

They still have an IKEA name. Who knows?

I’ve never gotten any of those names, but it is going to launch in January of 2024. It looks like they have all kinds of things.

I’m looking at these things and I’m like, “What are you supposed to do with them?”

I don’t know.

There are little round things on sticks. Do you jump through those like puppies?

They look like some weights, like ankle weights, those little circle things. I saw a different one. I think that tray is a little tiny bench and a step. I think that some of these things look like furniture, but then they turn into things you can use as part of your workout.

You can use this tray to eat off of or you can put your feet on it.

It seems like a good call.

Swedes are weird.

I don’t even know if it was the same thing. I’m just telling you what I remember. My memory is shit these days so I don’t know. It’s all gobbled up there.

—

Every week, there are so many new things to do in the world of Peloton. We try to help you narrow it down with the TCO Top five.

We have our new list this week. The first one is a favorite Peloton run. This is from October 3rd, 2023. This is a 30-minute focus flow hips. Why does it say favorite run and it’s yoga? I think somebody forgot to update this. That says favorite Peloton run. Favorite Peloton yoga class. Karen Marquez said, “This was an excellent class for hip mobility and stability. This was a great hip class, easily modified for all levels and well explained. My new hip is a year old and both hips, even the 56-year-old one. I love how I feel during and after. It also has a great playlist.” That’s fun.

Coming in at number two.

Favorite Peloton Hanukkah ride. A lot of people send this one out. You know the TCO community. We’re all about the love for Jenn Sherman. December 7th is when she had her first Hanukkah ride, a 20-minute ride. Lauren Scardella especially loved the personal stories that Jenn shared throughout the ride. She said that Jenn spoke about how much the holiday meant to her and her family, and how different but still important this year because this year, it sucks, even though they are now empty nesters. She got choked up after the ride was over and as a fellow member of the tribe, it was almost too much for her to watch.

We then have our number three favorite Peloton Christmas ride. This took place on December 8. That is the special one-off XOXO Cody Santa’s Werkshop with Cody. Jennifer Johnson Robinson is on team Cody and had a great time. “He is simply the funniest there is and these rides continue to get more and more funny. They aren’t for everyone but they are definitely for the Cody fans and there are a lot of those.“ There’s no doubt about that.

Look, it’s the favorite Peloton run again. This one was from December 9th. It was a 60-minute endurance run with Becks. This was from Mandy Rose. She said her favorite class this week was the 60-minute endurance run from 12/9. “Perfect coaching with relatable advice, Challenging but sustainable workout with great music.”

Finally, the unstackable. This is a 45-minute full-body strength with Assal. This came from Christina Sabatini. She said that it was her favorite class from this week and also made her modify her stack when she was done with it. Assal is on fire. It’s so good. It is in German and does not have subtitles at the time of this posting, but Christina shared that Assal calls out each move in English. It’s easy to follow based on the demonstration and Assal’s energy throughout the class. This would be a good one if you want to try something different and you’ve been a little worried about, “Can I take a German class?” You totally can.

We have a new run, row, and something else, Pilates.

Kristin McGee, Pilates extraordinaire, taught her first magic circle Pilates class. This is cool because they’re going to start incorporating in the Pilates classes all kinds of different little accessories. This was the first one with the magic circle. I’m excited to see that. For those of you who don’t know, Pulse Hour happens every weekday at 9:30 AM Eastern. It could be Pilates, barre, etc. To Tom’s point, this week in Peloton, there were new shorter row classes that appeared and also lots of extra 10-minute strength classes. If you’re looking for ways to make sure that you integrate your row and make sure you get your strength in, those are great ways. Remember, you do not need to do a 45-minute class for it to be effective. If you haven’t been doing strength, those 10-minute rows are perfect ways to get going with a new habit.

The final stop of the Hip Hop 50 tour is the East Coast.

I will be honest. I am so done with this. Not because I don’t want to talk about hip-hop but this particular thing has been going on for a year. It is the final one. It’s the East Coast. Lots of fun classes. I’ve heard amazing things about Alex’s and Tunde’s classes. Jess Sims and Adrian paired up. They were both wearing Brittany Allen’s gold amazing outfit. Tons of fun. Make sure you take those classes

We also have new Lanebreak classes featuring your favorite Dave Matthews Band, ants pedaling, and an EDM cool-down.

I’m cool with the EDM cool-down.

She’s not a big fan of the DMV.

I don’t like him.

He seems nice enough.

That’s 30 minutes though and why play the hits if you go see a Dave Matthews concert? He’s not going to play the hits. He’s going to play some jam band bullshit. I hope this Lanebreak is true to that because there is no best of Dave Matthews. If it’s the best, he’s not going to play it.

He plays the B-side that only got released in Belgium.

I’m not bitter. They sit there for 30 minutes on a guitar solo. No.

Or a violin solo. Dave Matthew Band fans are screaming at their car radio right now.

It’s okay. You can yell at me when I talk about how much I love Alanis Morissette or Taylor Swift. Everybody loves to hate Taylor Swift. There you go.

Clearly not everybody based on the Tour revenue generated. A lot of people liked it.

I’ve been a fan for a long time, long before it was cool.

You do not outsmart the Monkees. I’m putting that out there right now. Before we wrap up this segment, just a friendly reminder that the next two-hour Power Zone ride will be in January.

Those are going to be happening once a quarter. The next one is coming up. Hopefully, you are getting built up. You’re building up your time so that you can land properly on your seat for two straight hours in the month of January.

—

Only one birthday this week. It is from Camila Ramon and it is on December 18th.

That’s so close to Christmas. I wonder if that drove her crazy growing up.

She’s probably used to it. It’s been that way her whole life.

That’s fair. Happy birthday to Camila.

Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to our interview of the week. Austin Allison is going to talk to you about his love of Peloton and Pacaso. Stick around.

—

Joining us in this episode is Austin Allison. Austin, how’s it going?

It’s going great. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. I always like to start with our guests by asking them how they came to the world of Peloton. I’m curious to hear your time frame and how you decided Peloton was a good match for you.

It was quite some time ago. I can’t remember what year it was. A friend of mine who’s now our chief legal officer at Pacaso, his name is David, was an early adopter of Peloton and he was raving about the product for many years. A few years ago, I ended up buying my first Peloton and have been hooked ever since.

That’s where I was going. Your first Peloton.

What does that mean?

I’m thinking about my Pelotonic spirits through the places that I use them. I upgraded my Peloton as the product improved. Also, I use pelotons in Pacaso homes. I obviously don’t travel with my Peloton, but fortunately, Pacaso equips pretty much every home with the Peloton. When I’m on the road somewhere, I get to use the Peloton on the go.

That’s a great segue. Let’s talk about Pacaso.

Pacaso is a co-ownership marketplace for second homes, meaning we’re empowering people to co-own properties together. It was an idea that was born out of this desire to make homeownership possible for more people. We’re starting with second homes. Second homes tend to be very expensive. They’re also underutilized because most people use a second home 5 or 6 weeks a year. Pacaso is a solution that enables people to afford more homes and eliminate all the hassles that are customary for home ownership.

Pacaso is a co-ownership marketplace for second homes, meaning we're empowering people to co-own properties together. Click To Tweet

I’m confused about how that actually works day-to-day. That’s the difference between her and me. She’s legally and I like day-to-day.

We have so many questions.

The reason why this model works so well for second homes is because most people only use the second home 5 or 6 weeks a year and the rest of the time, the home sits empty. The way that co-ownership works is a handful of people. In our model, you can have as few as 2 families that own the home together and as many as 8 families that are in the home together. We’ve created a proprietary scheduling app that’s available from your smartphone. You go on and you block time and the calendar when you want to use the home. Everybody divis up the calendar throughout the year, but the app that we’ve created ensures that the distribution of the calendar is fair and equitable.

If you own, say, one-quarter of the home, the app will ensure that you get one-quarter of the peak season, one-quarter of the non-peak season, and one-quarter of the holidays and the same is true for all the other owners. All of the ownership is structured through an LLC, which is actually a very common ownership structure. Long before Pacaso, people have been owning homes in LLCs. The main advantage of LLC ownership is it limits your liability. It’s a limited liability company and it’s a private ownership structure. You can own a home with other people that you don’t have to know and retain your privacy and anonymity.

The main advantages of LLC ownership are it limits your liability and it's a private ownership structure. You can own a home with other people that you don't have to know and retain your privacy and anonymity. Click To Tweet

You might never interact with the other people in real life.

That’s right. That’s a feature, not a bug. One of the problems with do-it-yourself co-ownership is that when you’re owning a property, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made, whether it’s design, repair-related decisions, bill pay, and fender management. Oftentimes, when friends or family members who know each other go in on a home, they end up frenemies at the end of the experience because there are so many little points of friction.

With Pacaso, we sit in the middle. We’re the manager of the experience and we handle all the little details so the owners get to show up to their home, enjoy their home, ride their Peloton, of course, and leave without taking home any of the baggage or headaches that come with home ownership.

I’m assuming that means that you cut the grass or fix the dishwasher should it break.

Exactly. We do everything. There are a couple of big benefits for our customers. The first big benefit is the savings. As I mentioned, second homes are expensive. First homes are expensive too. You can afford 7 or 8 times as much home with this model because you’re only buying a portion of it. For example, if you live in New York and always want to own a house in Miami, Miami is super expensive. Not everybody’s got millions of dollars that it takes to play ball in that market.

With Pacaso, you can get into a home for a couple of hundred thousand dollars in terms of the purchase price. We offer financing, so you only have to put 30% of that down. It makes homeownership accessible to a lot more people. The second big benefit is the hassle. We handle everything from design, furnishing, bill pay, and maintenance. You literally get to enjoy the home with none of the headaches. That’s how to think about the offering.

I’m assuming Pacaso gets a fee because you’re a business to do all the things that you’re doing. Is that a fee you pay on top? Is that baked into your payment when you take out a mortgage? I guess if you pay cash, you probably wouldn’t need Pacaso.

Some people do pay cash. I’d say about 70% of our customers use financing. Why not? It gives you a little more leverage. Even though the rates are higher now than they used to be, one of the big advantages of co-ownership is that as rates have gone up, it impacts whole home ownership a lot more than an impacts owning a Pacaso. We’re seeing a lot more people now gravitate away from whole home ownership to co-ownership as a result of the rising rate environment.

It’s a little counterintuitive, but it makes sense to buy a house outright at 8%.

Housing affordability is such a big problem facing our nation. It’s more pronounced in certain markets, but it’s pretty safe to say we don’t have an affordability crisis everywhere. If you think about a home that you could have bought for ACTS three years ago, that home probably costs 2 or 3 ACTS to own now because of the combination of home price appreciation and interest rate increases. Co-ownership is a meaningful part of the solution. If you think about the housing problem that we’re in, it all comes down to the fact that we don’t have enough homes to meet the needs of our growing population.

There are only two ways to address this supply shortage. You either build more homes or make better use of the existing homes that we have and co-ownership the second bucket. It’s part of the housing affordability solution by making better use of the existing housing stock. We’re starting with second homes but someday, we envision that co-ownership can also help with primary homes as well.

Now I’m confused. If it’s your primary home, you have to get out for the next people.

Let’s say you’re a young professional, a single person, or maybe a young family without kids that wants to own and insert the market but has been priced out. Co-ownership would enable you to share a home with another family or another person and benefit from the equity and appreciation that come with owning a home. Homeownership is one of the primary ways that families build wealth in America. In many ways, I think about homeownership as the 401(K) of the future. The problem is many people are priced out of it. If you get a couple of people who can share a home together, everybody wins.

The other use case that we often see with co-ownership is where a family member who’s maybe a little older or a little further along financially will help another family member afford their home. Maybe you can’t afford to buy that home in your market, but your parents, grandparents, or uncle agree to buy a quarter of the home or half the home to help you with the financing. Over time, you earn your equity back and buy that partner out. Co-ownership is very versatile. It is about empowering people to pull their resources together and own assets more efficiently.

What would you do if it was your primary home when your time is up?

This happens all the time, by the way. Pacaso was not the inventor of co-ownership. Co-ownership has happened in primary, secondary, and multi-generational families. It’s been happening for decades. All Pacaso has done that’s different and innovative is to build a service layer in a marketplace on top of co-ownership that makes it easy and more accessible to more people. To answer your question about primary or secondary, it would be a slightly different model.

With primary home co-ownership, you would basically be using different parts of the home and sharing the home at the same time, versus secondary home co-ownership, where people are using the home one family at a time. I own a Pacaso in Cabo, for example, my wife, our son, and I. When we go down to Cabo, we usually stay for a week or two at a time. We’re the only ones in the home at that time. It feels like we own 100% of it because we have an owner’s closet there. We leave our clothes there. When we leave, we pack up our owner’s closet and fly back to California. The next owner comes in and then uses the home. That’s the difference in the use case between primary and secondary home co-ownership.

You’re actually in the primary. You would be co-habitating.

Yeah. Some people call it co-living as well. Sometimes that also happens with Pacaso, where two of the owners might know each other. Pacaso doesn’t introduce the co-owners to one another, but oftentimes, what will happen is a couple of friends or family members will go in on a home together. They might each buy an eighth or each by a quarter and they will use the property together even though they own separate interests. They’ll essentially double the time that they can spend in the home by using it together because their families are already friends.

That makes sense. You don’t mind. You like hanging out with these people. It’s not a big deal. Since we’re talking second homes and some of the locations that you’ve mentioned so far, these are pretty nice large homes that can accommodate multiple families.

They’re super nice. As a business, when we came to market, the ultimate goal was to serve as many markets as possible. We want to make homeownership possible for lots of people and lots of different price points and geographies, but we had to start somewhere. We chose to start at the very high end. We started in what I would describe as classic second home destinations that have, in many cases, national or global appeal, so places like Napa Valley, Aspen, Malibu, and Miami. Those markets tend to be very expensive.

When you look at our website, the average home price is pretty expensive, but we do have homes that are starting in the $150,000 per share range. As time goes on in the future, once Pacaso is available in more markets, you can expect the average price point to come down quite a bit. Someday, I expect to have shares available for well below $100,000. When you think about the fact that we offer 70% financing, we should get to a point where you can buy part of a home for as little as $15,000 or $20,000 down. That’s where we’re headed.

Fascinating. Out of curiosity, what market is that when you get to the $150,000 range? My head is thinking of Paducah, Kentucky.

Remember, we split every home into eight. If you take the share price multiplied by eight, that’ll give you the whole home price. $150,000 is still a pretty big number. That’s a million-dollar home. What we found is that home prices obviously correlate with the market. We’re not going to have $150,000 shares in Aspen because homes cost $10 million in Aspen.

As an example, I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Within a 3 or 4-hour drive from Cincinnati, there’s a handful of amazing lakes that people go visit in Tennessee, Kentucky, or Indiana. Home prices are a lot less expensive there. You could buy a nice home for $500,000 or $600,000 in a market like that. Once Pacaso is available in markets with more reasonable home prices, the share prices will come down in parallel.

I was thinking. I was like, “Lake of the Ozark seems like a place where some of the people go.”

That’s what I was thinking, too. I was picturing your sister. This is something your sister would totally do. This is totally a parallel. How did you decide Peloton should be added to these homes you’re putting out there?

It was a no-brainer for many reasons. I’ll share a few of the top reasons. The first is that the goal of a Pacaso home is that it feels home to the co-owner that’s there. Our owners are not just vacationing. Occasionally, you could argue that they’re vacationing, but most of the time, they’re living and working remotely at their second home or what we call their Pacaso. A lot of our owners have Pelotons. A lot of our owners are conscious about health and longevity. In order for us to make them feel like they were at home, we felt like we had to have a Peloton in the home. There are a small number of exceptions where we don’t have Pelotons. It’s usually because the home is too small and we don’t have the space for it or the home is like ski in and ski out on a ski resort.

A lot of the exercise that happens is on the mountain, but most homes do have Pelotons. Another thing that caused us to gravitate towards Peloton is we think Pelotons are cool. We like the brand. We like what it stands for. We like the people associated with the brand and the instructors. Pacasos are also very cool.

If let’s say, you own a Pacaso and you’re doing a girls’ weekend at your Pacaso, it’s cool to have a Peloton. If you’re out drinking wine during the day in Napa Valley, you can feel good about it because you got up early and exercised in your Peloton. There was a lot of brand alignment and lifestyle alignment, and in this practical reality, we need to invest in things in the home that help our owners feel like they’re at home while at their Pacaso.

That makes total sense and also Peloton has reached the name brand. Chances are, if someone wants a device like this, it’s probably Peloton that they’ve been using. If they show up in either one, if there’s not one, or God forbid, there’s an Echelon, now what do you do? Pacaso is not a fan go.

I never even heard of an Echelon. It is an alternative.

It’s a knockoff.

Let me say there are tons of fitness bikes out there that do what Peloton does and honestly, I don’t have an issue with most of them. Echelon, though, I have a special hatred for it and that is because they literally copy everything Peloton does. It drives me up the wall because there’s no innovation occurring and it’s cheaply done. Even the logo. Down to everything.

I get it. Trust me. Right after we launched Pacaso, there were twenty Pacaso copycats that popped up all around the country.

You know the feeling.

Can’t you be a little more original and creative? It feels lazy to do.

Do what we do, but put your own spin on it.

You guys actually own the homes. People don’t go out and find a home and say, “I would like this one,” and come to you for financing. You have properties that people browse and choose from.

We do, but we don’t retain ownership at home. Occasionally, we will take ownership of the home or part of the home until we aggregate all the co-owners, but most of the time, what happens is we’re the marketplace where sellers, real estate agents, or builders will come to Pacaso to list their properties and buyers will come to Pacaso to find their dream home. We match the two together and you can think about us like the real estate brokerage plus the property manager. However, there’s a layer of technology, community, and services that we’ve built on top of it.

It’s like Peloton is not a manufacturer of a bike. What Peloton is in my mind is a community, a program, and a lifestyle. All the stuff Peloton enables through the community makes Peloton unique and it’s the same and true with Pacaso. Once you buy a Pacaso as a consumer, you own it. Pacaso doesn’t retain any ownership. If you buy your Pacaso for, say, $200,000, and a couple of years from now, it’s worth $300,000 because the real estate has appreciated, you, as the owner, get 100% of that appreciation. Not Pacaso.

Has anybody resold it yet?

Yeah. People move around. Life happens. Sometimes, people will upgrade to a bigger house, downgrade to a smaller one, or house move to another market. Pacaso makes it easy for people to do that. We have a free transfer program. For example, when you buy a Pacaso, if and when you decide to move within a certain period of time, you can transfer to another Pacaso for free, no questions asked. We do see a lot of people move around and it’s gone really well.

So far, what we’ve seen is that the real estate has appreciated about 10% on average. People are seeing strong capital appreciation from their real estate purchase and we make the experience very seamless. It’s not like when you sell a whole home, where you have to go through the title, escrow, and a 45- or 60-day process. With Pacaso, you can buy and sell the same day. Easy in and easy out.

Can you trade locations? Can you say, “I have in Aspen. I’d like to go to Miami?” Does anybody in Miami want to swap up a week?

We do have a home swap feature. We call it Home Swap and it’s designed for owners who know one another. You can basically connect with other Pacaso owners. It’s similar to the Peloton feature where you can connect with friends and ride with them. If you know other Pacaso owners, you can connect with them in the app and swap dates within one another’s home. It’s super cool.

Pacaso has a home swap feature. It's designed for owners who know one another. You can connect with other Pacaso owners. It's similar to the Peloton feature where you can connect with friends and ride with friends. Click To Tweet

Thank you. I think you might have sold us here. It’s fascinating.

A lower price is coming soon. One other thing. One other little plug here on lowering prices that some people will do. Some people will go in on an eighth. Let’s say you found a $150,000 share in Palm Springs, which has more reasonable home prices relative to our other markets. You could actually go in on a share with a friend, which takes the down payment from $40,000 to $20,000 for that particular unit. That’s another thing that we’ll see friends and family members do from time to time.

What’s the name? Does that mean something?

Why Pacaso?

Names are tough. A lot of the good names were taken. It’s a production to come up with a name for a new company, but we had some criteria that we were going after. I would say we were headed down this path of focusing on artists because we felt like we were creating something here. The way that we empower 6 or 8 families to come together and enjoy this beautiful masterpiece of a home that we now call Pacaso, we thought about it as more art than science.

We were looking at art for inspiration for names and we connected with Picasso, the artist because he was famous for the style of art called Cubism, where he basically put together this collage of different styles of art and created this masterpiece. It felt analogous to what we were doing at Pacaso. It also sounded cool. We wanted a name that could be used as a noun. Instead of saying, “I own a second home,” we wanted people to say, “I own a Pacaso.”

When you say that you own a Pacaso, it invites conversation. It’s a provocative interesting conversation starter. It checked all the boxes, but we didn’t want to rip off Pablo Picasso’s last name. We were inspired by it. We came up with our own spelling, which is very different than the actual name. Fanatically, it sounds similar to the way that most people pronounce Pacaso.

What’s your Peloton leaderboard name, and how did you come up with it?

My leaderboard name is 1AlphaAlpha. I came up with that because I’m a pilot. I’m familiar with the phonetic alphabet and my initials are AA, so 1AlphaAlpha sounded cool. There’s a theme here. It’s things that sound cool.

Do you have a preferred instructor?

Ally Love is my go-to. I love Ally Love, but I would say a Pacaso favorite is Alex T. He gets a lot of love. He also came on our Pacaso’s Second Home Podcast a while back. It was a great sash. I plug that podcast for anyone who’s tuning in.

Does he have Pacaso?

I don’t know. He didn’t at that time. He may have one now. We have a podcast that talks about second homes, how people find their happy place, and the connection that people make through their happy place with friends and family. Alex had a great segment.

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

I would say start small. I always found it easier to start with 15 or 20-minute intro rides as opposed to Jumping right to the 45-minute session, even the 30-minute session. If you’re competitive, the 30-minute session is a lot of work. Try to start small and work your way up.

Start small. It's easier to start with 15 or 20-minute intro rides as opposed to jumping right to the 45-minute session. Start small and work your way up. Click To Tweet

I was thinking because I’m a thinker.

I’m worried. Where is this going?

The TreadPlus is coming back and they’re not cheap.

Are you going to have a program where we can share TreadPluses?

Yes.

I love it. It’s genius.

Buy 1/8 of a TreadPlus. I’m trying to figure it out.

Austin, we need it. It’s a cool name. We need a call name for that.

I like it. Give me some time. We could probably come up with something for you.

Austin, thank you so much for joining us. Before we let you go, let everybody know where they can find you, where they can find Pacaso and all the things.

I’m not super active on social, but you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at @GAustinAllison, which is my name with my first initial G. The better thing to follow is probably Pacaso because Pacaso is more active. You can find us at @PacasoHomes on Instagram or Twitter. Our website is Pacaso.com. We also have an amazing app where you can shop for homes. One other thing. I forgot to mention that we’re seeing a lot more people who maybe own second homes but don’t use them very often and can sell down their homes through Pacaso.

Pacaso has an amazing app where you can shop for homes. People who own second homes but don't use them very often can sell down their home through Pacaso. Click To Tweet

You can sell 50% or 75% of your home through Pacaso and keep the portion that you want to use while taking some chips off the table. We’re also seeing people do that on the buy side or maybe they wanted to buy a whole second home, but given interest rates in the macro environment, they don’t think it’s a great idea right now. They’ll come to Pacaso and we’ll aggregate co-owners for the other 50%, making that dream a reality. Please keep us in mind if you’re in the market for a second home or have one to sell or sell down.

That’s good to know. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

We do. Thank you.

Thank you both. I appreciate the opportunity.

—

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 all socials @ClipOutCrystal, I’m leaving a couple of platforms behind soon, and on the leaderboard @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or 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 where for $5 a month, you get all sorts of bonus content, which we’re going to record right now and you get ad-free episodes. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running and rowing.

 

Important Links

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.theclipout.com/

Latest Podcast

Crystal's Picks

Subscribe

Keep up with all the Peloton news!

you might also like