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[0:00] Jess Rothschild: I am so excited to say we are doing a live show in New York City on Wednesday, July 9th.

[0:06] Jess Rothschild: I'll be interviewing Janet Fitzgerald and Halle Becker live on stage at Joe's Pub. Plus, we'll have live music from the band Betty, whose songs are heard at the end of each episode.

[0:12] Jess Rothschild: Tickets are on sale now at joespub.com. Just search SoulCycle, Wednesday, July 9th, and I will see you there. This is Cult of Body & Soul, Episode 7, Turn the Smile On.

[0:39] Jess Rothschild: In our second bonus episode, we're going to follow three different instructors over their careers at SoulCycle. We're also leaving New York City, if you can believe it. Yeah, we're gonna see what life was like at Soul in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Plus, what's the culture like at the company today in 2025? Our first deep dive is with Ian, who we met last episode.

[1:04] Jess Rothschild: But here's what's interesting. Co-founder Julie Rice convinced Ian to leave his hometown of New York to open SoulCycle San Francisco pretty much immediately after he graduated training in 2012.

[1:18] Jess Rothschild: So how did Ian become a star in San Francisco, and why did he eventually leave the company five years later?

[1:30] Ian: Julie was like, I have a question for you. What are your thoughts on San Francisco? It was just like straight out of the gate like that. And I was like, I have no thoughts on San Francisco. I had been to San Francisco one time. I was offered 10 or 12. Those are the number of classes that you would be offered usually at that time at what was the sold out rate for a new instructor at the time. So the pay was always in tiers based off of how many people were attending. But the sold out rate was what I was offered for any class that I taught if I was to move to San Francisco. And I was just like, I'm not moving somewhere that I've never been. Julie did also give the advice of just like, if you have never moved, I didn't go to college. So she was like, if you've never really left New York, do it for a year. Just go for a year. And if you don't like it after a year, come back. But you have to live somewhere that's not New York.

[2:16] Ian: I talked to my friend Allie. She was also approached to do San Francisco. They said that she was confirmed. She actually had never really fully confirmed at that point. But she was like, yeah, they asked me, she's like, do you want to do the trip together? So they send me and Allie out to San Francisco on Memorial Day weekend. And as soon as we land, we start walking around the city a little bit. And we're like, this is actually a pretty cool city. I think with the money that they're going to offer us, we would be getting a much better deal if we were here. And the other thought process that we had was we'd be the big fish here. In New York, it's established that there's a lot of these other people. It's going to be harder to build as a trainer. Where in SF, their knowledge of SoulCycle is what we are giving them. And so we're like, we'll be the Janet of this region if we come out here.

[3:04] Ian: This was within the first couple of hours of us getting there. We find an apartment in Nob Hill. We took the ferry to Marin County to look at where the studio was going to be. And then when we were in Marin County, our friend drove us around Muir Woods because they want to show us all the things that this could be. Literally like Mufasa to Simba. Everything the light touches is your kingdom. It was that, but San Francisco. I remember the first feedback that we had gotten when we had first started teaching. All of us kept on mentioning New York, like back in New York, we do it like this. And LV was like, we had this happen when we opened LA also. Stop talking about New York because it's not New York.

This is San Francisco. So what do you want to build here? You have the power to establish the culture here. There wasn't really a huge group fitness scene out there to begin with. It was really just yoga. Yoga's huge in San Francisco. I mean, they have a yoga room in their airport for Christ's sake. Yoga's big there.

[4:05] Ian: It was technically supposed to be the San Francisco studio that opened first, but anybody that knows opening a business in San Francisco knows that that's never going to happen. It takes forever. So the Marin studio ended up being the first one to open. I remember I would wear SoulCycle gear everywhere that I walked because number one, I got it for free. Number two, it was like, start the conversation. Like, oh, there's a SoulCycle. There were only five classes on the schedule to start. All of those classes sold out with three-digit waitlists, over 100 people on the waitlist on each one. So they had to add classes. There was classes running every hour from 7:30 until 5:30, and every single one of those classes was sold out on the first day.

It was one of the most exciting things for them. I think Julie and Elizabeth weren't initially going to come for that opening, and then they flew out. They ended up not having retail bags that weekend. So they called Bree, who was the regional manager for LA. Bree had to go to the WeHo studio on a Friday night, get every retail bag she could find, get on a last-minute flight to come up to San Francisco and be there for the opening so that we had retail bags.

[5:07] Ian: The Castro studio opened up on Pride weekend, the year that Marriage Equality passed. That just gave me chills thinking about it. Marriage Equality passed the morning that the studio opened, and it was right on the corner of Market and Castro, which is where Harvey Milk used to lead his rallies. It was on the Harvey Milk building. It was where that studio is. There was just so many beautiful community-driven things that happened around that studio that I think the fitness scene in San Francisco in general blew up because of that. The dark side of having a really close community-driven thing, people got really invested in our lives in ways that I had to watch myself all the time. It was like being a celebrity without being a celebrity, which was crazy. I was 25 or 26. I did Molly on my birthday. People found out about it and called my boss and said that they don't want a druggie teaching their classes. That's how tight the community had gotten at that point.

[6:06] Ian: With Soul, what I found to be adding an extra layer of fear to that is like, I don't know if you've ever noticed when your instructor is calling out sick or is not going to be at work because it's work, right? They're posting about it on their Instagram or something afterwards or on their Facebook. It's like, hey, sorry, came down with the flu. This person's going to be taking over my class tonight, etc. But it adds a layer of like, if your riders are really dedicated to you, they're going to start canceling out of the class if they see that you're sick. So you're just like, do I call out sick? I have to explain it to all of these people. It's just so much explanation that has to happen. And then you start to see all of these other things.

There's instructors that are so sick, that are not calling out of work and going to their job. And so I should do that. There's someone that has a broken foot that is teaching from the floor with a broken foot. So if I can walk, I should be able to teach a class. There's people that are going through chemotherapy that are teaching their classes while they're in chemotherapy. And it's like, fuck, I got the flu, but I guess it's not chemo. But I should go and teach my class. It's a really unfortunate toxic mentality that you start to develop that you're afraid to be sick. You're afraid to call out sick. And so you get people that are teaching through sickness and teaching through injury. And then you wonder why that instructor is off the schedule for a little while. And it's because they threw their back out because they were teaching through a back injury.

[7:32] Ian: Yeah, crazy, crazy mentality of calling out. And I started to really not have fun there anymore. The company had changed a lot after Julian Elizabeth had left. It had become very numbers-driven as a company, which is what companies do. You can't really fault a company for bending the knee to capitalism as they do. I had been passed on a promotion a million times over that I should have gotten. I don't want to toot my own horn about it, but that reason would not have picked up if it wasn't for me and our opening team. So I don't know. My story was being erased from everything, even though I'd just been written up in the Chronicle and everything. I was just having a lot of contention with a lot of the higher-ups.

You're kind of stared at for everything. I wasn't allowed to have a bad day. I had the worst day of my life. I think I might have told you this prior, Election Day 2016. I was all excited because I'd just voted for Hillary. And then I was walking to the studio and got a text that a friend of mine had passed away from an overdose. And this was 15 minutes before I was about to teach a class, and I couldn't feel it. I couldn't think about it. I had to turn the smile on and teach my class.

[8:42] Ian: There was a school shooting that happened once. I had to turn the smile on and teach the class. Terrible, terrible things that have happened. I had to turn smiles on and teach a class. And I just couldn't put on the show anymore. And I think I was just kind of done being… I didn't want to be the star. I wanted to be recognized for hard work, but I didn't want to be a star anymore. And so I left San Francisco. I left SoulCycle. I thought I was leaving fitness at first. I traveled for a bit. While I was traveling, I decided to move back to New York.

[9:29] Jess Rothschild: As Ian came back to New York, he also decided to become an instructor at Barry's Boot Camp, where he would finally become a certified fitness professional. Ian's been at Barry's for five years now, and he also has personal training clients. I had Ian go a bit deeper on how Soul does not require their instructors to be certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine. So during training, there's one week where they're like, we're going to have anatomy lessons this week. And what I started to realize was I had not come from a fitness background, right? I was bartending before I was teaching there. And I was never asked to learn anything about fitness. I was like, I feel like people are certified in this kind of thing. Massage therapists can't just massage people without a license. They have to know the muscles so they don't hurt someone.

[10:14] Ian: And our anatomy lesson was supposed to be taught by Kim Perfetto. She was a master instructor. She had been around for a long time. She was built of muscle, so it was like you could literally see every muscle in her body. Kim was in LA, so Kim didn't end up teaching our anatomy lesson. We had, I would say, maybe 30 minutes. I honestly don't even think it was that long. And the only things that we were learning was flexion and extension of a joint. And it was like, when your elbow is bent, that's elbow flexion. When your elbow is extended, that's elbow extension. And that was kind of it. And I just remember afterwards, we were talking about moves on the bike. And Janet goes to the room and is like, all right, everyone tell me the muscles that are involved in a pushup.

And someone goes, chest. And she's like, yes, what else? Someone's like, shoulders. In my fitness knowledge, shoulders is such a broad term. Part of your shoulder has three different muscles. And then there's all this other shit. But someone goes, shoulders, yeah. And then someone goes, biceps. And I was like, they must have said triceps. I was like, bicep? Where's the bicep contraction? And I started to realize, no one really knows that much. And so I did a lot of reading on my own, but I still was never required to get certified. And I think just now, after working in fitness for so long, I've started to realize honestly how dangerous a lot of it was.

[11:43] Ian: There is a master instructor that I remember taking her class. We were doing her arm series. And it was some version of a cross crunch with the weights. And she was saying, do you feel that? Do you feel that muscle? That's your transverse oblique. Now, just know that that muscle does not exist. You have a transverse abdominus. You have an internal oblique. You have an external oblique. Your transverse abdominus is the corset muscle that sits right above your abs that cinches everything in. Its function is to stabilize your spine and to help you poop and push out a baby. And then you have an internal oblique and you have an external oblique, but you do not have a transverse oblique. And I believe she still says this in her class because someone mentioned it to me recently. I was a trainer there for over five years. I was certified in CPR, never in fitness.

[12:36] Jess Rothschild: I also spoke to Patty Wortham, a Pilates bar and yoga instructor in Los Angeles, to answer the age old question of is spinning actually a good workout?

[12:46] Patty Wortham: I mean, the short answer to is spinning a good cardiovascular workout? In some ways, the short answer to that is yes, it is. You get on that bike. You know, anytime we engage our thighs and our glutes in resistance training, that's going to demand a lot from your heart, right? And so spinning can be very effective. It's also it can be excellent interval training, presuming that you're not sitting on the bike going as hard as you possibly can for 45 minutes. But you know, you could do 15 to 20 minutes of those intervals on a bike, and that would be really good interval training. But you know, who wants to pay $45 for a 15 to 20 minute sugar shot of cardio? Like that's not what you pay for. You know, you pay for the theater of it.

[13:32] Patty Wortham: And so, I think that what ends up happening is especially because it does feel so good, people start doing way more of it than they need to. And once you start getting into these like really, really overadrenalized workouts, what ends up happening is you're going to burn a ton of calories. But about 45 minutes to an hour after the workout, you're going to want to eat a Thanksgiving dinner. I'm a pretty petite person by nature, but I was at my biggest and in some ways strongest when I was doing when I was teaching as much as I was teaching and spinning a lot. I gained a lot of muscle mass and a lot of weight because my appetite was bottomless. I mean, I just like if I was taking that many spin classes a day on top of what I was already doing, yeah, I mean, my body needed fuel to keep going.

[14:37] Patty Wortham: Like a good spin class where you're putting resistance on the bike and you're pumping into it with your thighs and your ass, like, unless you have an eating disorder, your healthy body is going to demand fuel so that it can do that again. And so, you do sometimes see people, I think people will tone up in really beautiful ways, but they won't actually shape shift into what they think that kind of workout will give them. But that's also a much larger conversation about a lot of people have been misled to believe.

[14:54] Diego: Our next deep dive is with Diego. In 2018, Diego began his seven-year career at SoulCycle, working the front desk in West Hollywood. After one year, he decided to become an instructor. Diego would be part of the last instructor training group before the pandemic. My very first day of Soul was a front desk shift in West Hollywood. And funny enough, my very first check-in was an Angela check-in. Whenever Angela Davis taught in New York City, it was an event. I would physically leave my job on the Upper East Side, race downtown, take her class and go back to work all the way uptown just to experience her class. People came for inspiration, for her words. There were portions of her class that didn't even have music in it.

It was just spoken word, which was also not common. And so people would literally just bow their heads down, close their eyes, and just listen to her speak, which was wild for me. When you're coming for a workout class, it was essentially church. And she carried with her this cult following. And so I feel like I got introduced to the circus right away. In that class, Beyonce was booked, Jay-Z was booked. They had their own bikes in the corner. I actually handed Jay-Z gum. I remember being like, is this life? How did I get plucked into this bubble? Every Monday at noon, instantly, we'd have a waitlist of up to 80-plus people. And that's on a non-holiday week, on just a regular Monday. Angela's classes, they always had to be full no matter what, which is hard when, again, you're dealing with West Hollywood, you're dealing with traffic, LA.

And so there would be times when the bikes would open up, there'd be no one from the waitlist there. So they would throw staff in, and we would be forced to ride against our will. I remember one time, actually, sorry, now you're just flooding me with memories. One time I was placed in between Usher and L.A. Reid, and I remember Usher kept spanking my ass. That was the culture there. It was just like Olivia Wilde, Kelly Rowland, and Tyler Perry, Justin Bieber.

[17:14] Diego: In 2019 to join Turkish tennis prodigy Akin Akman in his venture in opening his own studio. I remember that was a major hit, at least for the L.A. market and I think for the company as a whole, just because she did bring in so many super souls that it was very alarming to think, like, would we ever be able to get back to that point? Would we ever have our heyday like that and have that many celebrities packed into one room? The answer was no. In the last six years since she left, we've never had that amount and that capacity of super souls of high clientele, high profile clientele. I remember when you were in those hallways for those check-ins, it was just wild. Like anyone you brush shoulders past was just celebrity, singer, actor.

People flew in for this class. It was wild. I also I'm not sure if it was before the audition or after somewhere in training where I was told that, like, you have to fit a certain demographic. So they needed either a Mexican person, a gay person, a girl, a boy, like they all had different boxes to fill. And so based on where you were going to be stationed, it's like, oh, we already have enough of these people or enough of those. So it was very much stereotyped in that sense. So that's where you kind of had to take your ego out of it, because even if you were the best writer, you had to know that, oh, your market already has enough of these people, which is another thing that in training they ask you, are you willing to relocate?

What I was told is that you always say yes. You always say that you're so flexible and everything. But by the end, if you do want to go back home, you put your foot down and you say, I'm sorry, I can't anymore. And legally, they can't force you to move anywhere. And they've already invested that much into your training. So that's exactly what Diego did, because he already built a community as a front desk person and assistant manager. He was able to convince the company that he would thrive in his hometown of Los Angeles.

[19:04] Diego: So for me, I feel like I was a Mexican Latino vote. I was also the gay homosexual vote. And so I feel like they already had some of these in L.A. After I was done with training, they told me that they wanted to place me either in Texas or in San Francisco. And that's when I said, hell no, I am an L.A. baby born and raised. And I'm going back to L.A., regardless of what the demographics are. I know that I can thrive there. And I was so headstrong about it. And again, legally, they can't do anything. And so they had no other choice but to put me back. So because I had no experience with Julia or Elizabeth or had any idea who they were, my introduction to this was Melanie Whelan. And in my eyes, she did an okay job.

There's nothing crazy bad or negative about it that until later on, I saw just how wild shit was. But in the moment, it was okay. I think that I was getting my paycheck on time. Things were going smooth. We were still a success in the public's eye. But again, I was just a small fish in the big pond. I also had no idea who got them now forgetting their names, Elizabeth and I never met them. So with Julia and Elizabeth, I know that they were the founders and they're the whole reason why I was even there. But just to show you how much I had no idea who they were, like even their names would slip my memory. Their faces were on newspaper clippings posted around the studios. And even still, I would forget their names just because I never got to meet them.

[20:32] Diego: So pandemic hit March of 2020, I remember we would be closed for two or three months. We were open, we were closed again. We started having outdoor activations in the Los Angeles area. We opened up in downtown LA, we opened up in Century City Mall, Santa Monica, one in the valley in Westlake or Thousand Oaks. And so the bikes were spaced out. We were teaching with masks, everyone else had masks on. We had big ass headphones that we'd have to recharge constantly. So with the headphones and the silent disco part, that's how not only you heard the music, but the instructor's directions. And so you'd be teaching in this sweaty outdoor space. And in some instances, like with Century City, you were on top of the Disney store at the mall.

And so I remember I would make it a running gag that the Bloomingdale sign was right behind us and I would teach the last class of the night and I would be doing a Mamma Mia ride on the rooftop dressed in a fucking onesie and being like, let's hurry up before the Bloomingdale lights go off. Otherwise, you won't be able to find your car after. Surprisingly, with COVID, I think me personally, I thrived. That's where I found the majority of my community was in a time when people were so lost, so devastated and yearning for human connection. And so I think that was a very special time when everything around us was backwards and people were telling us not to connect. And yet we still find a way to connect. And so for me, that was a way of old SoulCycle still being alive and well.

[22:00] Diego: Julie and Elizabeth's replacement, Melanie Whelan, was pushed out of the company in twenty nineteen after expensing close to six thousand dollars worth of Christian Dior bags. She was eventually replaced by Evelyn Webster, the current CEO, as of today, twenty twenty five. Some things right out the gate that I noticed our uniforms went from always being yellow, which I believe was the case from the start of the company, all of a sudden now was changed to black, which is funny because I feel like staff used to complain about the yellow and they look like bumblebees and they look like this and that to now just being black. And for me, it looked like a mortuary or like a funeral home. I think they just said they look sleeker and more professional.

But in my eyes, it's like the yellow brought the happy. Like, why take that away? And I still to this day, I always joke about like, oh, we were there in the yellow days. It's kind of like a rite of passage at this point. The retail stipend was a big one for me as an instructor. Every month they would allot us pretty much a whole set and we were walking billboards for the company. So every month I believe it was like one hundred dollars. I don't know the exact amount, but we would get a retail stipend to be used solely on SoulCycle clothing. And so that's why you would always see your instructors wearing soul shirts and soul sports bras and sweats and leggings, all the things, because we would be essentially given free money to use back into the company.

And that's something that I also pride myself on, that I didn't purchase a single piece of retail my entire time working there because I didn't want to give my hard earned dollars back into the company. And especially after they had already been giving it to us for free. But I feel like that was a major turning point. But yeah, as soon as the retail stipend left, I stopped buying clothes. But then they still had the expectation that please wear SoulCycle related branding while you teach. And I'm like, OK, well, you're not giving us money for these uniforms that get torn up and damaged very quickly. So how do you expect us to not only get paid very, very little, but on top of that, out of that little pay, give it back to the company? It was very backwards.

[24:00] Diego: Another small detail that I think was major for me was the dog policy. We used to sell onesies for dogs and be very dog friendly. I remember Pasadena had like a whole water bowl designated for the dogs that would walk by and dog treats. So Soul not only was a community for humans, but also for doggies who are walking past the studio, who got to know their names and their owners and everything. Just to give you a little example, there is one dog in particular, Murphy, who would walk past the Pasadena studio all the time, bless his heart. His owner, Beth, lived like a couple blocks down, didn't write a single SoulCycle class. And yet we would see her walk her dog daily, got to know her. Just to show you how strong the connections were, particularly in the Pasadena location, that we not only cared about the humans, but the dogs and people who never even took us class at SoulCycle.

We were just so community focused. They changed the dog policy on us. And I think the reasoning behind it was like someone got bitten in New York or something. It might've been a rumor even, but they changed it. And so all of a sudden now you couldn't bring your dogs. And I wasn't the only instructor who would bring their dogs. And again, I have a pug and I had a multi-poo, completely harmless. Writers and staff loved them. I would always give a notice that I was bringing them. But the last time I brought them, I was written up for bringing them. And so that for me was just such a flag of like, this is how the company is changing. That even dogs that are supposed to bring happiness to people are now a bad thing. We had to throw away the water bowls and we stopped selling the dog onesies and stuff. So it's just sad to see a lot of these fun things were stripped away from the company.

[25:28] Diego: Studio closures was another big one during COVID. We went from, I believe, having 13 studios in the LA market down to five. And I remember just how sad it was each one of those leaving because each one carried their specific community. I was lucky enough to teach at a good half of them. I had regular classes in Westlake, in Calabasas, Pasadena, downtown LA, Hollywood, West Hollywood. And out of these, the only ones that survived were Pasadena, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Manhattan Beach. Even Newport was closed down, which was our only OC location. And it was sad because you're not only killing off writers, you're killing off staff. In my eyes, as from being behind the scenes, I think there were ways that we could have retained. How do we allocate our money differently? But again, I think their top priority became keeping the fantasy alive and keeping the brand alive.

[26:22] Diego: After the major hit of the pandemic, SoulCycle finally partnered with ClassPass. ClassPass is a subscription service that offers access to a wide variety of fitness classes. While all of SoulCycle's competitors were part of ClassPass, SoulCycle refused to join until they had to. I firmly believe ClassPass saved this company, which I looked up and it was December of 2022 when ClassPass started being included. Soul refused to bring the price down. They were always like, no, we have to keep a certain standard. Their solution, I believe, was to join ClassPass, which brought its own set of fun problems and stuff. But another wild thing was that they would never promote it. They would never admit to it.

And so people would constantly be saying, oh my God, they're on ClassPass. They use them, but they didn't admit to it. We definitely saw as instructors, our numbers go up and we were told that we would still get paid per head for these ClassPass people. So it didn't affect us that much, except that the culture maybe shifted a little bit. Now we're getting people who just want the fantasy of Soul. So they'd only come for one class and say, look, I took a SoulCycle class, get their selfie by the neon sign and never come back again. And on top of all of that, they also had the beauty of being able to review these classes afterwards. And so not only were we getting shit on in person, but then afterwards we get one star.

I remember one of my favorite reviews was someone who gave me three stars very early on, not five, not one. And the only comment was, it was fine. And I, to this day, joke that I'm going to frame that shit and put it over my toilet because it's just so representative of who I am as a person. Just, it was fine.

[28:04] Diego: Diego said the highlight of his entire career at SoulCycle was number one, meeting his husband there. Number two, Christina Aguilera herself showing up during a Christina Aguilera theme ride. I would correlate my theme rides to concerts that I was going to that month. So being a gay man in Los Angeles, I had plenty to choose from. So in July of 2021, Christina Aguilera was playing the Hollywood Bowl. And leading up to, I believe it was a week before, I get notified from my superiors that, hey, they want to do a partnership. Like Christina Aguilera's team wants to do a partnership with SoulCycle. And this happens often where like celebrities or concerts in town will partner with them. I think that it's to try to boost sales because they're hurting and they're not able to fill up their audiences.

And so it's an easy way to try to get people excited about it. So they're like, we're giving away a free ticket giveaway, which ended up being the entire room. So leading up to the class, just before entering the room, I remember all the managers and everyone was there from HQ, which I was like, this is weird. This isn't normal. All the managers were there and they huddled and they're like, Diego, by the way, in case she shows up, in case she shows up, turn on the lights, lower the volume, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, wait, what do you mean in case? And they're like, just in case. And I was like, no, no, no. Tell me now. Yes or no. So lo and behold, we get to the last song of the class.

We're playing fighter. And right when the bridge happens, door swings open, Christina Aguilera walks in, turn on the lights, freaking out. To this day, front desk staff would troll me because there's pictures of videos of me just like gawking at the woman. And yeah, she ended up giving tickets away to everyone in the room. So that's what kind of kept me going and keeping my faith and my belief in it.

[29:48] Jess Rothschild: Episode of Cult of Body and Soul on YouTube. If you want to see videos and photos of all the instructors, we have it all waiting for you. Go to YouTube and search Cult of Soul Cycle. I am so excited to say we are doing a live show in New York City on Wednesday, July 9th. I'll be interviewing Janet Fitzgerald and Halle Becker live on stage at Joe's Pub. Plus, we'll have live music from the band Betty whose songs are heard at the end of each episode. Tickets are on sale now at joespub.com. Just search Soul Cycle, Wednesday, July 9th, and I will see you there.

[30:30] Jess Rothschild: Our third instructor deep dive is with New York instructor Noah Shaw. Noah was at Soul for 12 years up until 2024. Noah is worthy of a biopic unto himself. He is the single most unlikely fitness instructor in New York City. Janet handpicked him as a recruit after he went from 300 to 200 pounds just by riding at Soul Cycle.

[31:04] Noah Shaw: So, one day, I'm riding like a madman. I'm riding two times a day at Soul Cycle and I'm riding so much. I walked in the first day, I was over 300 pounds. I lost over 100 pounds in a little over 90 days. People were calling the studio and they were asking when I was riding because they wanted to ride with me because I was loud and I was fierce and I was just going for it. I thought about a life of crime and violence and I've been shot at, I've been stabbed. A matter of months later, Janet called me. She said, are you riding tomorrow at 12 o'clock? I said, I hope so. She goes, well, I need you. I showed up the next day at like 11:45 and I said, what's going on? She goes, Lady Gaga's riding and Lady Gaga's spiritual advisor likes you and thinks you have great energy and wants you to sit next to Lady Gaga for her first ride.

Lady Gaga's spiritual advisor was a yoga teacher from New York named Trish Donegan. Trish had gone up to Janet and said, specifically, I want Noah sitting next to Gaga for her first ride. Shortly after he was Gaga's co-pilot for her first ride, Janet asked Noah if he ever thought about being an instructor. I was like, no, that seems like the furthest thing. My doctor just told me I'm going to die six months ago of a massive heart attack. Janet recruited Noah and he was given a one-way flight to New York City and told to find a place to live. So when I got to SoulCycle, not only had I gotten sober, which is a highly spiritual event, you know, there's an old saying, religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for those of us who've been there. My SoulCycle class was a spiritual class. End of story. You got a great workout, but you were going to change.

[32:55] Noah Shaw: I had a unique perspective on SoulCycle because I was extremely close with one of their most popular instructors, Stacy Griffith. She mostly teaches on the Upper East Side, which is filled with the one percenters of Manhattan and the Hamptons. Stacy is the same instructor who we talked about cutting the COVID vaccine line in episode four, You Create Monsters. There was every single other instructor at SoulCycle. And then there was Stacy. She was held to a different standard. She was paid more than anybody. She had a life of luxury and her birthday every year. It was a spectacle with every rider trying to outdo every other rider by the expense. Hermes blankets, they were like paying homage to her literally and financially.

They would stack gifts for days, like cases of the most expensive champagne, boxes of caviar. So the riders were trying to peacock and out impress themselves in a very, in the most simple terms. I always like to go to like Occam's razor. You know, the most simple term is usually the answer. It's Upper East Side. And it's all about, I've got more than you do. Okay. You've got more than I do. I'm going to marry your husband. How about that? And a lot of that happened. Upper East Side, East 83rd, there was a phenomenon. And I knew this because I worked at that studio. A lot of the women, the escalades would pile up out front on 83rd. And the women would not bother bringing clothing to class because they would just grab whatever they wanted off the rack, run in the bathroom, change into it, and then run into class and never pay for it.

It was the height of entitlement. They just tore the tags off. They just tore the tags off and left them and the staff would find tags in the bathroom. They didn't care. It was nothing to them. You know, $30, $80, $120, it's nothing to them. This was just there. They had earned this right. These were people who a lot were super soul. A lot were extremely wealthy. So it was that entitlement that we see throughout our society. This is just a small sample of it. So the Stacey phenomenon grew and Stacey ended up buying an apartment two doors away from EC 83rd. She redecorated and did it all in the finest furs and wallpapers and all the best stuff because she deserved it. She worked her ass off and I'm not going to deny her.

Listen, if somebody's going to pay you thousands of dollars to teach a SoulCycle class, you know, I had to fight to get my $150 a class and that was two pay raises. I went from 50 to 100 and then to 150 and I was selling out classes. I started out at $50 a class. Then they gave me $100 a class and then they gave me 150 and I'd been there for over 10 years when there were instructors like Stacey who were making thousands of dollars a class. I always used to say it's animal farm. Some pigs are more equal than others. Charismatic leaders throughout history were just captured on a spin bike for SoulCycle. These are charismatic leaders. These are MLK. These are Julius Caesar. Like these are charismatic leaders like Kendrick.

Kendrick is charismatic. Drake is not. Drake is interesting. Drake is good. Drake produces a lot of music. Kendrick is charismatic because he speaks and people listen and that's what great SoulCycle instructors all have in common is when they spoke. It wasn't just about the music. It's when they spoke to the class through the microphone, the people listened.

[36:34] Noah Shaw: So at the moment that Janet recruited me, I was working as a case manager at one of the biggest rehabs in Beverly Hills. I am the first and only instructor to ever be hired out of the mental health world and I was led by great psychiatrists and great psychologists and shown techniques of how to work through this. As I pay attention and being a bit older, it gives me a little bit of a look back and there's a lot of people going to SoulCycle because of mental health issues. A lot of anorexia, bulimia. There were a lot of people who were riding too much. I would always say, what's going on in your life? I would pull them aside. You've been here a lot. You're riding a lot, like two, three times a day.

Like what's going on? And I had no problem doing that because I was trained how to do that. I was trained to help people open up to what was going on in their lives and feel comfortable and safe talking to me, knowing that I was available to them. I was trained to be one of the only people in their lives who would notice that something wasn't right.

[37:40] Noah Shaw: I clearly did not fit the stereotype of a fitness instructor, but that can sometimes be to your advantage if you stick out long enough to connect with people on a human level. So I thought that with Janet recruiting me and friends with Stacey, that I don't think I was going to have an easy time of it, but I thought I had gained a little grace and that grace evaporated instantly upon my arrival in New York. Training was hard. As Haley had said in an earlier episode, if they didn't like you, it was going to be hard and it was hard. It was brutal. I got picked on and I got screamed at like, nobody can ride to that. Nobody can ride to that. That's too fast. That's too fast. It was brutal. They wouldn't give me a class.

They wouldn't put me on the schedule. There was a meeting every week of the upper B's, the higher people, and a word leaked out that somebody had asked, is he still fat? Can he even teach a class? Is he still fat? Does he still look gross? That's how superficial it was. I thought I was in good shape. I'd been 300 pounds nine months previously. I was told by a doctor I was going to have a heart attack at any moment. Here I was. I'd finished SoulCycle training and I couldn't get a class. They wouldn't give me one lousy class. Everybody in my group was teaching on the schedule. I don't know. To this day, I don't know what Janet... I'm an alcoholic. I'm a sensitive guy. There might not have been any issue.

It was more SoulCycle's issue with me in not giving me any classes. I don't know if Janet specifically didn't like me or didn't want me to teach or whatever. I have no idea, but it just felt like she was the representative for me of my connection with SoulCycle. And when the connection was like severed or I was pushed away, it felt like that was mom going, no, go away.

[39:29] Noah Shaw: The reality is Janet Fitzgerald had nothing to do with programming. This was SoulCycle co-founder Julie Rice's department. Perhaps they felt he needed more time to develop or wasn't quote unquote on brand. Still, Janet was SoulCycle to him, so he felt hurt by her, but it was definitely misplaced. You know, the person I was most emotionally attached to outside of Stacey, who Stacey and I had history, so I knew Stacey and Stacey knew me. But Janet was the one who like changed my life by letting me become a SoulCycle instructor. So to not get her approval was really interesting and really felt, you know, I process things differently. I mean, not differently. I just I feel everything.

[40:06] Noah Shaw: Years later, I ran into Janet at one of the infamous holiday parties. I was now an established instructor, and I was finally able to express some gratitude. And I said, you know, Janet, I can't thank you enough because you really taught me how to play other music that wasn't just the dance music. And they gave me the freedom to play the rock music and the other sort of stuff that I like, like R.E.M. and U2 and Bruce Springsteen and things like that, which I've gotten from her and from Sue Molnar. And I said, you know, we have a lot of writers in common. I said, I can allow you my writers when I'm not teaching that to go take your class. She goes, you know, I have the same thing. I have writers who have taken your class and they love it.

I was like, wow, it's cool that we kind of cross over like that. I said, I feel honored that any writer of yours would take my class. She said, yeah, in a very cool way. And she's very cool. She has a cool, cool thing about her. And that was just a brief conversation. But it's sort of like it was like a big for me, it was a full circle to like get to express gratitude or for somebody that I'd been angry with for holding me back and me thinking that not wanting me to be an instructor. But I love happy endings. And it's not that it was happy, like joyously we hugged and kissed and threw each other around, but it was peace and I strive for peace and we made peace with each other.

[41:29] Noah Shaw: In December 2012, it was announced that Soul would be opening its first Brooklyn studio in my neighborhood of Williamsburg. I rode down there and it was still under construction. It was still just wood. I walked up on the podium and I leaned against the wood wall. There was nothing installed yet. And I just pictured the room being filled. And nine months later that happened. So I finally got my first class and it was the worst possible time slot in all of SoulCycle history. It was 12:15 on Mondays at Upper East 83rd, like nobody is around to ride in a class. Everybody's on the phone because they're booking their bikes and they're obsessed with it. In New York City, it was a definite thing. It was like there was Central Park, there's the Empire State Building and there's noon on Mondays.

[42:16] Noah Shaw: By the pandemic, I cultivated a dedicated following, particularly in Williamsburg, with my signature rock star ride where I played all classic rock music. I had also opened four studios, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and Short Hills, New Jersey. Once New York was granted permission to hold classes outside in masks, SoulCycle and Barry's Boot Camp jumped on it, holding classes on rooftops throughout the city. While I was running on a treadmill in a mask indoors at Barry's, I was teaching outside in the freezing New York winter.

[42:53] Noah Shaw: So Brooklyn Heights had an outdoor studio and it started off in the fall. It wasn't so bad and it was nice and the temperature was moderate. Everybody was super excited. I was selling out classes. Everybody was so excited to get back to anything slightly normal, even if it was riding in masks and like germinating every bike. But wintertime came. It was so cold that instructors were calling going, I'm not going to teach today. And they would just go, Noah, you have three classes. And it was just, it was brutal, but I was happy to be teaching again. I was happy to be making money. You don't teach, you don't make money. And I'd had enough of not making money when I wasn't teaching for all those years after I finished training.

I lost a lot of money. So there were some big-time instructors in their mind and in my mind because they were getting paid more and they were just calling out. They were saying, I'm not going to teach, it's too cold. And I didn't care. I was so happy to be seeing my riders because I built a following at Brooklyn Heights and I was teaching the Sunday morning survivor, which is a really big class SoulCycle. And I was selling it out. I was teaching a Friday night rock star ride in Brooklyn Heights and I was selling it out. So I was so glad to have my gang back, my people.

[44:09] Jess Rothschild: Cult of Body and Soul is created, executive produced and narrated by Jess Rothschild. Sound design by Caitlin White, theme song and original music composed by Elizabeth Zipf. This is our final episode for now, but stay in touch on Instagram at JessXNYC where we may have future bonus episodes, interviews and live events. For now, this is Cult of Body and Soul and thank you for coming on this ride.