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Speaker 1: this episode contains references to violence, gun violence, and a
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Speaker 1: forward if needed.
Speaker 3: I will always pivot.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's such a beautiful I'm so glad that
Speaker 4: this is the pod because we have such a capacity
Speaker 4: to iterate, and I think that that's so freeing.
Speaker 1: Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
Speaker 1: women who dared to pivot out of one career and
Speaker 1: into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
Speaker 1: these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. You might
Speaker 1: remember when we hosted a live podcast recording with Pelotons
Speaker 1: Robin Arzon as a Chelsea factory here in New York
Speaker 1: this past winter. Well, I'm so excited to finally share
Speaker 1: that conversation with you. Robin's been a long time dream guest.
Speaker 1: In fact, we asked her to be on season one,
Speaker 1: but the time it just didn't work out. Most of
Speaker 1: you probably know her from her kick ass workouts for Peloton,
Speaker 1: but her story goes so much deeper, from surviving an
Speaker 1: incredibly traumatic experience in her twenties, to leaving her law career,
Speaker 1: to joining Peloton and eventually becoming the vice president of
Speaker 1: fitness Programming, to writing multiple books, to starting her company's
Speaker 1: Swagger Society, and of course to becoming a mom and
Speaker 1: soon mom of two. Her Pivots don't seem to stop.
Speaker 1: Our conversation truly covers it all. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: to Chelsea Factory for hosting this conversation and to Robin
Speaker 1: for such an inspiring and vulnerable conversation in front of
Speaker 1: a live audience.
Speaker 2: Enjoy. Thank you so much everyone for being here.
Speaker 1: For those who have my friends for a long time,
Speaker 1: great to see you all.
Speaker 2: For those who may be new to me, to she Pivots, we.
Speaker 1: Are a show that was born out of the idea
Speaker 1: that I needed to redefine success for myself. I spent
Speaker 1: over a decade in Washington as a political strategist. Had
Speaker 1: felt like I had professionally hit the height, like had
Speaker 1: a pretty great career. Then I had three kids in
Speaker 1: three and a half years, and my entire career was
Speaker 1: pulled out from under me. I had to listen to
Speaker 1: a lot of Robin bike rides. So if you'll say,
Speaker 1: I okay about myself, and then I needed to open
Speaker 1: up the conversation like I needed to redefine success for myself,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how to do it, but I
Speaker 1: needed to hear from women who had done it before.
Speaker 1: So I thought, how do I get every woman that
Speaker 1: I idolized to answer every question that I've ever had?
Speaker 2: Well, I start a podcast, of course. So we've had
Speaker 2: to date some incredible interviews.
Speaker 1: We were launching our new season next week with vice
Speaker 1: president Kamala Harris, but tonight we have a very exclusive,
Speaker 1: very important, very exciting conversation with not just I think
Speaker 1: we can all agree, the breakout star instructor of Peloton
Speaker 1: of home fitness in general, but also has a job
Speaker 1: within the organization as the vice president of fitness Programming.
Speaker 1: Also two time New York Times bestselling author, now with
Speaker 1: the third book out today, Strong Baby, Robin Arson.
Speaker 2: Robin, come out and join me. This is so fun.
Speaker 1: Robin, thank you so much for launching the physical book
Speaker 1: tour here with us, with this room, with all of
Speaker 1: your fans.
Speaker 2: Can you guys here for Robin Yay.
Speaker 3: I'm so misful.
Speaker 4: I'm grateful that we can gather in community. And my
Speaker 4: last event here was a few years ago. Peloton had
Speaker 4: homecoming events here, so I have really great memories in
Speaker 4: this space and I'm happy to be back.
Speaker 1: I love it so much, Robin, I have to tell
Speaker 1: you to I feel like my crown's on a little
Speaker 1: straight to be able to be here in this space
Speaker 1: with you. So I want to talk about your book here,
Speaker 1: why we're coming here today starting with this book. Look,
Speaker 1: I have to ask, I love seeing you here in
Speaker 1: front of it. What were you gonna say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just gonna say talking to the microL.
Speaker 2: We got lighting, We have microphones.
Speaker 1: We gotta use it all, honeyw we might as well
Speaker 1: we might as well get some audio forget this as
Speaker 1: not like cable news where they just like stick a
Speaker 1: little lab right next to me and my audio goes
Speaker 1: with me. Thank you, Robin for helping me in all
Speaker 1: parts of my life, including this interview. Okay, so, Robin,
Speaker 1: I love this picture so much. Is this you and
Speaker 1: your daughter? And what does this book mean to you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a depiction of Athena and myself and
Speaker 4: so Addireta Sonda illustrated strong Mama, and we asked her
Speaker 4: back for a strong baby. I was really proud to
Speaker 4: partner with her. She's a fellow Latina, she's a young artist,
Speaker 4: and I just she happened to be plant based like
Speaker 4: we have a lot of values in common, and so
Speaker 4: she did a great job really channeling real pictures. Like
Speaker 4: the imagery in this book. It's a really Athena's bedroom.
Speaker 4: Like that's really besides the pets, because we don't have
Speaker 4: any pets, and we won't have any pets, so Athena's
Speaker 4: just gonna have an imaginary cats and dogs. You gonna
Speaker 4: point to this book and be like, but where's my
Speaker 4: real dog?
Speaker 2: That day has coming?
Speaker 3: Besides that? Yeah, it really depicts our life.
Speaker 1: So I love your progression here in your books, Like
Speaker 1: I really feel like it really does follow not just
Speaker 1: your trajectory over the last couple of years, but so
Speaker 1: many of your writers. You know that you started with
Speaker 1: a fitness program, a fitness journey, very biographical, then went
Speaker 1: to Strong Mama and now Strong Baby.
Speaker 2: So what has that progression felt like for you?
Speaker 3: I mean, it feels like lineage.
Speaker 4: It feels like storytelling in its most honest form, where
Speaker 4: you're kind of passing the microphone a little bit for me,
Speaker 4: centering the caregiver. One of the very few children's books
Speaker 4: that feature a pregnant person, certainly on the cover, certainly
Speaker 4: a pregnant active person and.
Speaker 3: For a strong baby.
Speaker 4: I wanted to make clear that, you know, even the
Speaker 4: youngest among us, our athletes are strong, have the capacity
Speaker 4: for resiliency and language around that. Right, So the mantras
Speaker 4: and things that I infused in this book.
Speaker 3: I didn't babeify it, right.
Speaker 4: I wanted to use the real language that I speak
Speaker 4: to and around my daughter, and you know, and hopefully
Speaker 4: she absorbs it.
Speaker 1: But I love that having a strong pregnant woman, a
Speaker 1: strong active pregnant woman in its children's book, I think
Speaker 1: is so important not just for the children to see,
Speaker 1: but for the parents to see. You know, we chatted
Speaker 1: about this a little bit backstage, but with my pregnancies,
Speaker 1: I had been very active beforehand. With my pregnancies, I
Speaker 1: gained about one hundred pounds. I was very out of
Speaker 1: shape because that wasn't a piece. The fitness and the
Speaker 1: diet wasn't a piece that I could keep in managing
Speaker 1: all other pieces around it. And it was peloton that
Speaker 1: helped me get back into shape and helped me get
Speaker 1: back healthy and strong again. And I think part of
Speaker 1: the reason that I kept the weight on through all
Speaker 1: of my pregnancies was because I was embarrassed to prioritize
Speaker 1: all that time and energy for myself. I thought that
Speaker 1: if I started to look different, then people would look
Speaker 1: at me and say, well, she doesn't prioritize her kids,
Speaker 1: she doesn't prioritize her career, she must be prioritizing herself.
Speaker 1: And that was a hard piece for me to accept
Speaker 1: for many years. And it wasn't until I was I
Speaker 1: thought to say, you know, I want my kids to
Speaker 1: actually see me prioritize my health and I want them
Speaker 1: to see me be stronger. Only at that point could
Speaker 1: I really get back into the routine.
Speaker 2: So I love that you've.
Speaker 1: Created not just the prenatal but the post natal programs.
Speaker 1: Was that personal for you to create them, or that
Speaker 1: had been something that you've been thinking.
Speaker 2: About for a while. Both.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was what I was actually going through
Speaker 4: at the time, obviously postpartum, and there's.
Speaker 3: A real need for it.
Speaker 4: And even I mean, what we've put out is just
Speaker 4: to drop in the bucket of what I hope one
Speaker 4: day becomes, you know, an even more robust library, because
Speaker 4: it's really needed. I mean, the medical care community in
Speaker 4: the US, the standard medical care postpartum is not six weeks.
Speaker 4: That is nonsense. Postpartum is forever. Postpartum is years. Postpartum
Speaker 4: is how long you say in building your body to
Speaker 4: a place of strength and capability. And you're the one
Speaker 4: who decides when that journey. If that journey is ever over,
Speaker 4: my journey will never be over.
Speaker 3: There's no bounce back. There's pushing forward and raising the bar.
Speaker 4: For myself because that's my self defined finish line. And
Speaker 4: I think we need not only literacy and language around
Speaker 4: those concepts, but we need support in the meta message
Speaker 4: that self care isn't selfish, but also in the practicalities
Speaker 4: of like, how the heck do I what is a
Speaker 4: pelvic floor?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like, there is the basic things that aren't necessarily part
Speaker 4: of everyday conversation, but for pregnant females it's very important.
Speaker 1: So I want to back up to little Robin, a
Speaker 1: little baby Robin where we started here. You will talk
Speaker 1: a lot about your mother and your parents and the journey,
Speaker 1: your professional journey that we will get through all of that.
Speaker 2: But I want to back up to little Robin. What
Speaker 2: was little Robin?
Speaker 4: Like the straight a student, surprisingly very shy, Oh, it
Speaker 4: is surprise shy as a kid arts and craft's kid,
Speaker 4: very bookish, So part of that is still very much
Speaker 4: who I am. I love I mean, I'm a voracious reader,
Speaker 4: but clearly a very public person. So I would say,
Speaker 4: you know, I was very introverted as a kid, and
Speaker 4: now I consider myself like an extroverted introvert, like I
Speaker 4: regained my energy through solitude.
Speaker 2: But when do you think that extrovert turned on for you?
Speaker 4: I joined the debate team in junior high school and
Speaker 4: I was like, they passed me one my microphone, and
Speaker 4: I said, I'm never letting this microphone go. But that
Speaker 4: was also when I started toying with the idea of
Speaker 4: going to law school and really getting enchanted with like
Speaker 4: social science and politics, and so it's probably something related
Speaker 4: to that.
Speaker 1: But as soon as they handed it to you, you
Speaker 1: were like, I'll take the floor exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it bolstered something in me for sure.
Speaker 1: Was that the beginning of thinking about going to law
Speaker 1: school and becoming a lawyer.
Speaker 4: Well, my father is an attorney, so I saw him,
Speaker 4: you know, throughout his career, but that it was I
Speaker 4: think it was really in junior high when I started
Speaker 4: thinking about it seriously, and I just made the choice
Speaker 4: early on, even before applying, you know, to schools to
Speaker 4: undergrad that law school was in the cards.
Speaker 1: Did you think it was because you wanted to emulate
Speaker 1: your father or was there a particular aspect of law
Speaker 1: that was drawing you in.
Speaker 3: For me, it was the oral advocacy piece. It was
Speaker 3: the idea or the advocacy piece in general.
Speaker 4: It was the idea of being able to take something
Speaker 4: in a book and then tell a story around that,
Speaker 4: and so storytelling. Interestingly, storytelling has always been really central
Speaker 4: to my life, and that was actually the most appealing
Speaker 4: part of law.
Speaker 3: So I ended up becoming a.
Speaker 4: Corporate litigator, and I love the ability to wordsmith something,
Speaker 4: the ability to meet with a client and say, like,
Speaker 4: what are your facts and what's the finish line, and
Speaker 4: then just figure out a way to do it.
Speaker 2: It's so funny.
Speaker 1: I didn't decide that I wanted to go to law
Speaker 1: school until right before I went, Like, I.
Speaker 2: Did not know that I was working up towards it.
Speaker 2: But it was also the advocacy that drew me to it.
Speaker 1: It was that I didn't know how I wanted to
Speaker 1: make an impact in the world, and law felt like
Speaker 1: the way to be so broad with it, Like that
Speaker 1: I could impact so many people's lives, but I didn't
Speaker 1: think about the storytelling aspect of it. I think that
Speaker 1: intimidated me actually, Like I think the thing that drew
Speaker 1: me to law was that it felt black and white,
Speaker 1: Like it felt straight and clear. But you all saw
Speaker 1: the nuance very early, so.
Speaker 4: Interestingly for such a linear pursuit as law usually is
Speaker 4: perceived to be. I look at it as painting, like
Speaker 4: I can see read a legal brief and read like
Speaker 4: the dreadful you know, tomes that we had in law school.
Speaker 4: And for me, I'm like picking up colors and pieces
Speaker 4: and painting a picture. Like for me, it's a very
Speaker 4: visual experience.
Speaker 1: Actually, So you were in law, I mean you didn't
Speaker 1: just go into law, like you went into the most
Speaker 1: grueling part of law, like corporate litigation.
Speaker 2: Like I remember when I actually was sworn into the bar,
Speaker 2: the girls.
Speaker 1: Behind me were talking about how they were in They
Speaker 1: were in corporate litigation jobs and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I seep at the office all the time.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I don't think I can be
Speaker 2: a lawyer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the hustle is real, but it was also I
Speaker 4: don't know, I was kind of like it was enchanting.
Speaker 4: For a while, I was in the corporate litigation department
Speaker 4: of Paul Hastings in New York City. That's where I
Speaker 4: did my summer associate year, and then I joined them
Speaker 4: after graduation.
Speaker 3: And it taught me how to be a business.
Speaker 4: Like I have a lot of tentacles to my LLC
Speaker 4: and my entrepreneurship, and that is directly related to my
Speaker 4: ability to think like a lawyer. So they really had
Speaker 4: to happen sequentially for me to be who I am today.
Speaker 2: The hustle is real for Robin.
Speaker 1: She's a two times New York Times bestselling author, and
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty she was named one of the most
Speaker 1: influential people on Fortune magazines forty under forty list than
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, she became the first ever recipient
Speaker 1: of Glamour Magazines Daring to Disrupt award, and through it all,
Speaker 1: she still somehow runs ultra marathons. So you talk a
Speaker 1: lot in your classes about you will use the word pivot,
Speaker 1: like you're pivot out of law and into fitness. I
Speaker 1: actually feel like the amount of shares I get from
Speaker 1: friends of like Robin said, pivot.
Speaker 2: Today, like she pivot it out of law. You're gonna
Speaker 2: love this class.
Speaker 1: I was like, guys, I would be exhausted if I
Speaker 1: listen to everyone of Robin's classes.
Speaker 2: We talked about ehivting out.
Speaker 1: Of law, but it was actually quite It was one
Speaker 1: event that began the pivot out of law for you,
Speaker 1: something that you allude to often but don't talk about
Speaker 1: in detail often.
Speaker 2: Would you mind sharing that with us?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So when I was entering my final year at NYU,
Speaker 4: I was down in the East Village with girlfriends. I
Speaker 4: was apparently at a law firm at the time, and
Speaker 4: I went to a wine bar with my girlfriends and
Speaker 4: it ended up getting held at gunpoint.
Speaker 3: Like a man walked in with a gun.
Speaker 4: He had one hundred rounds of artillery, like he had
Speaker 4: kerosene samurai swords. I mean, it was truly like a
Speaker 4: horror film. And I ended up becoming the negotiator. It's
Speaker 4: essentially a pseudo negotiator at twenty years old with NYPD
Speaker 4: who ended up being called and coming outside.
Speaker 3: A number of people were shot.
Speaker 5: Our top story this morning, the NYPD is investigating a
Speaker 5: late night shooting in the East Village. Well coming up,
Speaker 5: how surviving and on a imaginable and horrifying crime help
Speaker 5: Robin gain.
Speaker 3: Focus and a new purpose.
Speaker 1: This is a part of her life that I did
Speaker 1: not know, and when I read the story, I knew.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask her about it, her.
Speaker 4: Inspiring journey and resilient after it was truly like it was,
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's weird. I've been processing it for
Speaker 4: a really long time and I'm very comfortable talking about it.
Speaker 3: I've written about it publicly.
Speaker 4: I processed it through lots of thousands of thousands of
Speaker 4: miles of running and that I had a choice every
Speaker 4: day thereafter, right, Like it's really interesting. I think trauma
Speaker 4: survivors will understand this. Any type of trauma that you
Speaker 4: kind of have, it kind of sits with you, like
Speaker 4: it's always like this.
Speaker 3: Little bit of a companion.
Speaker 4: And instead of trying to get away from that, I
Speaker 4: just decided to like absorb it enough to then rise
Speaker 4: above it, Like I don't know.
Speaker 3: The catalyst for me was so borytelling.
Speaker 4: Actually it was when I became really acutely aware of narrative,
Speaker 4: my inner monologue and the story that I was telling
Speaker 4: myself about myself. And I learned later that this is
Speaker 4: a therapy technique like a talk therapy technique. But I
Speaker 4: started writing about myself and the third person, and I
Speaker 4: would literally to get over the fear, because I had
Speaker 4: fear of.
Speaker 3: Even just leaving my apartment and getting on the subway.
Speaker 4: So I would write in my journal like Robin gets
Speaker 4: on the A train at west Ford Street, she goes
Speaker 4: to school, she comes back, She's safe. Like I had
Speaker 4: to write about myself and the third person to start
Speaker 4: to really see myself.
Speaker 3: Like living out of this. And then I was like, well,
Speaker 3: how far can I take this?
Speaker 4: So that became like a lot of how I teach
Speaker 4: and how I express myself. Some might perceive that as
Speaker 4: like hyperbolic, but like, I truly do believe I'm the biggest,
Speaker 4: most amazing badass on the planet, and I want everyone
Speaker 4: else to feel that way about themselves too.
Speaker 2: Like why not.
Speaker 3: It can be so much more for.
Speaker 4: The world when you're filled with that energy, especially when
Speaker 4: you're doing it from a place of like anchored in
Speaker 4: community and giving, which.
Speaker 3: I hope I am most of the time. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's how that whole thing.
Speaker 4: It was a catalyst, and it was a huge inflection point,
Speaker 4: and it continues to be an inflection point and rising
Speaker 4: above trauma, I think does.
Speaker 3: Become a choice.
Speaker 4: It becomes like thousands of subsequent inflection points and choices.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to drink self pity as poison.
Speaker 1: I just don't How did the running start to come
Speaker 1: into play then? Because you hadn't really been an athlete
Speaker 1: growing up.
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
Speaker 4: I started running in law school and I don't know why.
Speaker 4: I had, like dusty not even running shoes in my closet,
Speaker 4: and I just decided to like walk jog to campus
Speaker 4: one day in the suburbs of Philadelphia, went to Villanova
Speaker 4: Law School, and that's.
Speaker 3: Where it started.
Speaker 4: It was just like a curiosity that turned into a
Speaker 4: hate relationship. To be honest, I was like, I hate this,
Speaker 4: But how could I be.
Speaker 3: So bad at something?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: You know, I was like, I was so horrible at this.
Speaker 3: How could that be? I'm in law school, I'm kicking butt.
Speaker 3: But then, you know, we always it's good.
Speaker 4: It's good to have that beginner's mindset, and I certainly
Speaker 4: was a beginner, and that's how it started. It was
Speaker 4: very humble, humble beginnings. I mean, it was truly a
Speaker 4: few blocks at a time.
Speaker 3: Do you think.
Speaker 1: That that it was such a physical challenge for you
Speaker 1: and so different when you were in a setting that
Speaker 1: you were doing so well. Was that part of the appeal,
Speaker 1: like to run towards something that that was so different
Speaker 1: and that scared you a little bit?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: I mean that's when I started to develop in parallel tracks, right,
Speaker 4: like develop an appetite for discomfort, and like, yeah, just
Speaker 4: everything about law school was really like terrifying and enthralling.
Speaker 2: A lot of crying on my side and a lot
Speaker 2: of crying.
Speaker 3: I'm a school verson. I'm like, give me the syllabus.
Speaker 3: I love a Staples run like, I'm just like that.
Speaker 4: I am a Virgo board in September, honey, and give
Speaker 4: me school supplies all day.
Speaker 3: I'm into all of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was definitely into the law school game. But
Speaker 4: it really was a time clearly I had to run
Speaker 4: through a whole lot, and that scole was very much
Speaker 4: cord is all filled as well. So I did need
Speaker 4: an outlet for many reasons, and at that point in
Speaker 4: law school I was the only one. I was really
Speaker 4: doing all that training by myself, and turning that journey
Speaker 4: as a runner as a solo pursuit allowed me to
Speaker 4: go on my own path without any other gaze or
Speaker 4: any other expectation or any other finish line. So that
Speaker 4: was really important too, because it was all my own terms.
Speaker 4: It wasn't like I have to pr I didn't even
Speaker 4: pick up a copy of like Runners, but I didn't
Speaker 4: know anything.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was truly, truly.
Speaker 4: Just like going out, like lacing up and going the
Speaker 4: purest training I've ever done.
Speaker 3: Actually, So in that regard, I think about of it.
Speaker 1: Finally, something you've said that I love so much is
Speaker 1: resilience is a value worth celebrating.
Speaker 2: I love that so much.
Speaker 1: Was that a piece of it that that you needed
Speaker 1: to be kind of working on that resilience muscle as well?
Speaker 4: Sure, I mean, resiliency is something that lives in all
Speaker 4: of us, but we need to have opportunities to become resilient.
Speaker 3: Like there always needs to be that moment.
Speaker 4: I think of kids and the monkey bars, like when
Speaker 4: you're grasping from one monkey bar to the other, that little.
Speaker 3: Moment of tension where you're suspended. I live for that.
Speaker 3: I've created my whole life based on that little moment,
Speaker 3: like my entire life.
Speaker 5: I want us to get on that bike and roar.
Speaker 5: The human spirit is so resilient. I have a tattoo
Speaker 5: on my ribs that says resilient stock.
Speaker 2: And my mom.
Speaker 3: Told me that growing up.
Speaker 5: She told my sister and I that we came from
Speaker 5: a resilient stock, that we were from the lineage of
Speaker 5: hundreds of years of fighters and warriors, and I think
Speaker 5: I was raised by a wolf pack.
Speaker 4: Working out is actually my life's work is astonishing, definitely
Speaker 4: to me and everyone around me.
Speaker 1: How did it go from running a couple of blocks
Speaker 1: to then turn into it sounds like almost a form
Speaker 1: of therapy for you one percent.
Speaker 3: It was moving therapy, There's no question about it. It became.
Speaker 4: So I actually saw a flyer at a bank. So
Speaker 4: this is before like even palm Pilot or like Blackberries,
Speaker 4: like you had to like sit at a computer to
Speaker 4: like research something at that point.
Speaker 3: So I was at the bank depositing an actual check.
Speaker 4: I saw a flyer at the bank for a ten
Speaker 4: k that was happening the next morning. I did not
Speaker 4: google how far a ten k was. I just showed
Speaker 4: up at the Art Museum Steps in Philadelphia and I said,
Speaker 4: I'm here for the ten k. I registered on site
Speaker 4: and I nearly died and I crossed that finish shine,
Speaker 4: and I said, that will never happen again, that will
Speaker 4: never be that hard again.
Speaker 3: So I did some ruderentary training.
Speaker 4: And then a half turned into a half marathon, and
Speaker 4: that half marathon after a breakup, turned into a marathon.
Speaker 4: So yeah, literally it was like, I ran the half marathon,
Speaker 4: broke up with my ex boyfriend, and then I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that fall marathon sounds real nice. So I just like
Speaker 4: literally kept running and it was therapy. It was there
Speaker 4: was something really magical that was happening. During the runs,
Speaker 4: it was abysmal, but after the runs, I.
Speaker 3: Was like, oh, oh, like this is the there's.
Speaker 4: Something heroic about this, Like I feel like a hero
Speaker 4: when I'm done.
Speaker 3: And I thought, I want to live a life that
Speaker 3: is filled with that, and movement became a real tool
Speaker 3: for that experience. Movement has changed my life.
Speaker 4: Movement has unlocked a wellspring of confidence. It's not an
Speaker 4: athlete at all, and I think that goes to the
Speaker 4: power of reinvent the power of curiosity. And I didn't
Speaker 4: discover movement until much later in life as an adult,
Speaker 4: when I joined Peloton and started running marathons and ultra marathons,
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 1: Look at my So to go from the tool, the process,
Speaker 1: the movement therapy to actually turning us into a career.
Speaker 1: You said there wasn't actually kind of one like Jerry
Speaker 1: maguire moment. It was a progression. But what were those
Speaker 1: concrete steps that you took.
Speaker 4: I've talked previously about setting a calendar appointment for ten
Speaker 4: minutes a day, and it was in those recurring calendar
Speaker 4: appointments with myself that I would google, you know, what
Speaker 4: does an editor at a magazine do? Like, what does
Speaker 4: just anybody even tangentially related to sports journalism or sports
Speaker 4: in general. I didn't have illusions that I was going
Speaker 4: to be like some Olympic athlete or something, So I
Speaker 4: was like, what do the people around these people do?
Speaker 3: And that was how it started. It started really humbly.
Speaker 4: But intentionally and consistently. And that's when I realized that
Speaker 4: little by little can amount to a lot, and that
Speaker 4: we can unstick ourselves like there is like a stasis
Speaker 4: that we there's like an inertia that we can sometimes
Speaker 4: find ourselves in.
Speaker 3: Fear is often very paralyzing, and we.
Speaker 4: Tell ourselves the story that one small moment isn't going
Speaker 4: to take us out of that feeling of inertia, and
Speaker 4: I realized I called myself on my own BS and
Speaker 4: I just said, try try something, And that trying ended
Speaker 4: up like planting tons of seats, and just in the mean,
Speaker 4: I would say I probably sent out literally thousands of emails,
Speaker 4: like thousands of requests, like thousands of Google.
Speaker 3: Searches over the two years. And then finally I took
Speaker 3: a leave of absence from my law firm.
Speaker 1: She left Paul Hastings to start a tumbler called Shut
Speaker 1: Up and Run, which eventually became the title of her
Speaker 1: first book. Social media as a means of reporting was
Speaker 1: just starting to take off, so believing that was good enough,
Speaker 1: she booked a ticket to London to cover the games.
Speaker 4: I slept on my friend's couch for the entirety of
Speaker 4: the games for three weeks, and I had a cracked
Speaker 4: iPhone and I just blogged it. And I reached out
Speaker 4: to athletes, like professional athletes who are now collaborators and
Speaker 4: friends of mine.
Speaker 3: But I was so bold, like I didn't know what
Speaker 3: I didn't know. So I was just like, Hey, what's up.
Speaker 3: I love running, you want to talk about it?
Speaker 2: And I'm not.
Speaker 4: Kidding like that is what I did all through London,
Speaker 4: and people were trying to talk about like this girl
Speaker 4: who just rocked up and like red lipstick and lots
Speaker 4: of gold rings and big hoops and just wanted to
Speaker 4: talk about running. And I was like, yeah, what's up on, Robin,
Speaker 4: It's me And I made business.
Speaker 3: Cards and everything like I was fully.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, these business cards are so embarrassing now,
Speaker 4: but there were like these tiny little strips of paper
Speaker 4: with my tumbler on it, and I was fully of
Speaker 4: walking around London just like. But I left with a job,
Speaker 4: so I had to quit my law firm job to
Speaker 4: take this extended leave to go to London.
Speaker 3: So I went to London without a job. Left London.
Speaker 4: So I was in a Nike store and the then
Speaker 4: CEO of Nike came up to me and he was like, wow,
Speaker 4: you have a great style.
Speaker 3: You should consider writing about like sports fashion. And I
Speaker 3: was like, well, funny that you should say that. Here's
Speaker 3: my business card.
Speaker 2: And you can find my tumbler on it.
Speaker 4: And I ended up leaving with a job working on
Speaker 4: the agency side where Nike Women was my client and
Speaker 4: I was helping run their social media accounts.
Speaker 3: So I truly thought I had my dream job.
Speaker 4: Six months after that, I realized that the storytelling piece
Speaker 4: that I was so in love with really needed to
Speaker 4: be infused with my own movement and my own perspective
Speaker 4: in order for it to be fulfilling to me. And
Speaker 4: I had developed a burgeoning audience on social media at
Speaker 4: the time, so I thought, Okay, like what if we
Speaker 4: make this even bigger? And you know, I started doing
Speaker 4: more ultra marathons and I started writing my book, and
Speaker 4: then later Peldon came into the picture. But yeah, during
Speaker 4: this time, it was just lots of risks and lots
Speaker 4: of jumping off cliffs.
Speaker 3: But there wasn't one aha home moment. There were thousands.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was like a masterclass in social media
Speaker 4: and like how a big brand navigates that. So that
Speaker 4: was really that was a I mean, I definitely walked
Speaker 4: away with a pretty intense toolkit. So I'm grateful for
Speaker 4: that experience, and I think that's why I had that experience.
Speaker 4: But you also have to sometimes have things in life
Speaker 4: that are definite knows, so you even know what the
Speaker 4: yes is supposed to look like. And then I also
Speaker 4: I was running with a crew called Bridge Runners. There's
Speaker 4: still they still rock in downtown. One of the oldest
Speaker 4: runs and Cruise in the world, the original Run Crew
Speaker 4: actually in the world. And Run Crew is a kind
Speaker 4: of underground rogue meet up at ten o'clock at night
Speaker 4: on the Brooklyn Bridge. Like I mean, were just very rogue.
Speaker 4: It was like DJs and creators and fashion designers and
Speaker 4: drug dealers. I mean, it was all kinds of folks,
Speaker 4: all kinds of folks. And they were my friends, and
Speaker 4: they were unapologetic, and they were you know, they would
Speaker 4: do marathons and ultra marathons, but they weren't traditional, they
Speaker 4: weren't considered traditional athletes. And so they gave me permission
Speaker 4: to show up in the ways that I show up
Speaker 4: in the world. And that was very interesting to a
Speaker 4: lot of the brands at the time, a lot of
Speaker 4: the athletic brands. And so I would be tapped to
Speaker 4: go for coffee with like a marketing exec and like
Speaker 4: pick my brain, and then I would very gratefully receive,
Speaker 4: you know, a really nice package in the mail of
Speaker 4: like shoes or whatever.
Speaker 3: And obviously that's an amazing gift.
Speaker 4: But I also had rent and I realized, like with
Speaker 4: my lawyer background, I was like, oh, so if I
Speaker 4: charged this much billable hourly rate as a lawyer, and
Speaker 4: I know that the brands have money for.
Speaker 3: Campaigns, They're going to start paying me.
Speaker 4: And so that was another pivot, another way I had
Speaker 4: to bet on myself.
Speaker 3: I was obviously told no many times, but I.
Speaker 4: Held out for the right yesis and that really provided
Speaker 4: an important bridge to my ability to become a business.
Speaker 1: Do you think that leaving to become to like kind
Speaker 1: of bet on yourself. Leaving that was maybe harder or
Speaker 1: less hard, I guess than leaving law altogether.
Speaker 4: Definitely harder because in this at this time, I was
Speaker 4: cobbling together. You know, after I left the agency, I
Speaker 4: was like teaching spin, writing my book, coaching runners. It
Speaker 4: was just very much like a Hodgepodge entrepreneur life that
Speaker 4: was not glamorous, and I had no idea what I
Speaker 4: was doing and I was completely making it up.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a conversation that we have a
Speaker 1: lot with women who are thinking about pivoting either maybe
Speaker 1: into a different career, into a different kind or out
Speaker 1: for a time and then back in. But that there's
Speaker 1: not one formula, and then you have to figure out
Speaker 1: how much risk you can take in that moment, and
Speaker 1: so maybe it's a wholesale change, maybe it's a partial change,
Speaker 1: but everybody has to figure out like what their risk
Speaker 1: assessment is in that very moment, which it sounds like,
Speaker 1: is what you were doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually did what I call a four part audit.
Speaker 4: I call it that now, and like as I was
Speaker 4: developing my masterclass on mental toughness, I finessed that a
Speaker 4: little bit more.
Speaker 3: But the audit was really like a brass tax.
Speaker 4: It was like financial, you know, like what dollars and
Speaker 4: cents do I need to make all this work? It
Speaker 4: was like a spiritual existential like who am I?
Speaker 3: What am I doing? You know, post trauma, just twenty
Speaker 3: mid twenties, Like what are we doing here?
Speaker 4: Then physical it's like how am I feeling in my
Speaker 4: physical body? Like what is the energy as currency that
Speaker 4: I'm going to give to the world. And of course
Speaker 4: this was a very athletic pursuit. My business was athletics,
Speaker 4: so that was important. The fourth piece was kind of
Speaker 4: what kind of community do I want to build in
Speaker 4: the world, Like what's the value system that I want
Speaker 4: to be the connective.
Speaker 3: Tissue and that kind of relates to the other things too.
Speaker 4: I guess that's a little bit related to the existential piece,
Speaker 4: but that also needed to answer how I wanted to
Speaker 4: feel when I arrived at this perceived destination. So that
Speaker 4: piece was the more the most compelling question, because I
Speaker 4: think when we're in between, when.
Speaker 3: We're feeling that friction and that feeling of.
Speaker 4: Like I need to get unstuck, we might focus on
Speaker 4: a title or somebody else's definition of an achievement or
Speaker 4: business that has certain accolades, but we don't often a
Speaker 4: visualize ourselves in that thing, Like I would visualize myself
Speaker 4: honestly in spaces like this and think about the contours
Speaker 4: of what that would feel like and look like. But
Speaker 4: I don't think we always ask ourselves the question of, like,
Speaker 4: how do I want that to feel like?
Speaker 3: When I would think about okay in this new world.
Speaker 4: Of whatever this is for you? When your head hits
Speaker 4: the pillow at night, what do you feel.
Speaker 3: About your day?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: Those are the things, the qualitative things that I would
Speaker 4: ask myself write in journal journals and vision boards were
Speaker 4: huge for me. So those are the kind of reflexive
Speaker 4: questions that I was asking myself at the time and
Speaker 4: still do.
Speaker 2: So why Peloton and how Peloton?
Speaker 4: So I did a vision board and in the business
Speaker 4: quadrant was disruptive technology, and I didn't even know what
Speaker 4: that meant.
Speaker 3: I had like a picture of like an Apple computer.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what that meant. I knew that what I.
Speaker 4: Was I was teaching spin at a local spin studio
Speaker 4: in Union Square. I thought this has to scale, Like,
Speaker 4: there's like four people in here tonight and I'm.
Speaker 3: Gonna give you my all, honey, and we're gonna slay it.
Speaker 4: But I was like this, this, this, there's kind of
Speaker 4: even more here. And then I read an article about Pelton.
Speaker 4: It was a blurb in a technology magazine and really
Speaker 4: small bird.
Speaker 3: But I don't think I would have noticed.
Speaker 4: I don't think my interest would have peaked if it
Speaker 4: hadn't been for the vision board. And then so I
Speaker 4: reached out like their info at email. It was Pelton's
Speaker 4: cycle at the time, and I was in that same
Speaker 4: week to meet like the fifteen people that worked.
Speaker 3: At the company.
Speaker 2: Wait, so who answers the info?
Speaker 3: I think it was like the community lead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she asked me in the audition, and our former
Speaker 4: CEO was there, and it was like the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Do you remember exactly what you wrote in that email?
Speaker 1: Like did you say Hello, I'm Robin and I'm going
Speaker 1: to blow your mind?
Speaker 4: Now I think I specific I probably have that email somewhere, Gosha,
Speaker 4: I have to find it.
Speaker 3: Actually might have been my MSN email. Oh I got
Speaker 3: this embarrassing. So yeah, I remember writing something to the effect.
Speaker 4: I do a lot of drafts in my notes of
Speaker 4: important notes and memos and emails and things, and I
Speaker 4: did have like some text of the copy that said,
Speaker 4: like our business objectives were aligned. And then I wanted
Speaker 4: to storytell and be a fire starter for people around
Speaker 4: the world. And I really saw the global scale, like
Speaker 4: the Art New York City studio wasn't even open.
Speaker 3: Yet, and I was like, yeah, we're about to run
Speaker 3: this shit. Okay, there's nothing in the world like what
Speaker 3: we do at Peloton.
Speaker 2: Peloton is the greatest thing ever to exist.
Speaker 5: The boy.
Speaker 2: It's sold by the company Peloton, which reportedly now has
Speaker 2: more customers than even the sping Giant Soul Cycle.
Speaker 3: What would you say is Peloton's biggest competitive advantage today?
Speaker 1: The brand is golden and the user experiences platinum and
Speaker 1: always has been many and then right before you started
Speaker 1: at Peloton, so now you've positioned yourself as physical well
Speaker 1: being health as being core to your brand.
Speaker 2: You had a bit of a health surprise.
Speaker 4: Yes, Actually, a few weeks before I started at Peloton,
Speaker 4: I had already accepted the job.
Speaker 3: I had already planned a trip.
Speaker 4: To visit my sister, who was living in India at
Speaker 4: the time, and I came back feeling super lethargic and fatigued,
Speaker 4: and just I didn't understand what I was feeling, super
Speaker 4: run down, and I took a blood test and I
Speaker 4: found out that I am a type one diabetic and
Speaker 4: my pangrease doesn't produce insulin.
Speaker 3: So at some point in those few I had.
Speaker 4: Stopped producing insulent or producing very little insolent and autoimmune
Speaker 4: condition that could not have been predicted. And I thought,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, I'm on the precipice of this amazing
Speaker 4: job that is physical, it's in front of cameras.
Speaker 3: I've never done this before.
Speaker 4: And I also had an ultra marathon a few weeks
Speaker 4: after my diagnosis, and I was like, I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: have to figure this out. And the doctors who I
Speaker 4: was seeing at the time were extremely They had I
Speaker 4: think they had very good intentions, but they were questioning
Speaker 4: like who was this very quizically, who is this unicorn?
Speaker 4: And why does she think that she's going to run
Speaker 4: an ultra marathon and get on TV tomorrow?
Speaker 3: And I thought, okay, well I'm just going to show you.
Speaker 4: So I had to educate myself and I had to
Speaker 4: find the right partners in my care and I just
Speaker 4: I had really had to treat myself, honestly, like a
Speaker 4: science experiment because there weren't many people doing what I
Speaker 4: wanted to do physically.
Speaker 3: And I did. I did figure it out, thankfully, but
Speaker 3: it was hard.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine feeling like you've left this career,
Speaker 1: you've bet on yourself and it's all centered around and
Speaker 1: being physically able. Yeah, was that a moment that you
Speaker 1: were actually questioning the path that you went down?
Speaker 3: Not really, No, I didn't question it at all. I
Speaker 3: did question.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was so much unknown, right, so when
Speaker 4: you're when you are, I have.
Speaker 3: To think like a pancreas.
Speaker 4: So the average type one diabetic makes an additional two
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty decisions a
Speaker 4: day related to my livelihood, related to my ability to
Speaker 4: live and so when you add the complicated elements of
Speaker 4: fueling and physical activity, blood sugar going too high, too low,
Speaker 4: that's a lot. And I just decided, like, this is
Speaker 4: just going to be part of my business now, like
Speaker 4: now you are the business manager of your pancreas, like
Speaker 4: I just had to like really just be very practical
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 3: And I mean it was really it was. It was
Speaker 3: certainly a lot.
Speaker 4: It was a steep learning curve, and I think it
Speaker 4: always is even now, even though I have amazing control.
Speaker 4: The reason I didn't question it is because I had
Speaker 4: so much body awareness and so much understanding already of
Speaker 4: how food, how my body reacts to food, how I
Speaker 4: was already able to think critically around those leavers that
Speaker 4: would be relevant.
Speaker 3: To my care.
Speaker 4: So now I just needed to kind of add a
Speaker 4: layer of technology and education onto it.
Speaker 3: And once I did that, it was all it was okay.
Speaker 1: In your classes, you have a lot of mantras that
Speaker 1: you repeat that you come back to.
Speaker 3: Let's polish our crowds, baby, so let's go ahead and
Speaker 3: bring the love and.
Speaker 1: Baby, and you share quite a bit about yourself, which
Speaker 1: I don't know it was necessarily the model at the time.
Speaker 1: How did you decide to be so vulnerable in opening
Speaker 1: up so much of yourself to your classes and how
Speaker 1: did you decide what gets shared and what stays for you?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well the second part of your question, I
Speaker 4: guess the filter. I think that's something that we all
Speaker 4: kind of wrestle with, you know, to the extent that
Speaker 4: we all have public lives on social media platforms or
Speaker 4: in business spaces or with coworkers whoever.
Speaker 3: But you know, part of it, of the of the sharing,
Speaker 3: and then just being myself was.
Speaker 4: Honestly like I didn't survive to shrink, like I didn't
Speaker 4: survive and really fight for my own confidence and power
Speaker 4: after being held at gunpoint to be anybody but myself period.
Speaker 4: And then when I add to it, I'm really proud
Speaker 4: to be a Latina.
Speaker 3: My mother is a Cuban refugee.
Speaker 4: My father is like the real life goodwill hunting, Like
Speaker 4: he was a janitor at Acunity school that wasn't accepted
Speaker 4: and then just started auditing classes and showed up for
Speaker 4: tests and the teachers like, you're not a student here.
Speaker 4: He's like not yet. It was wild, Like my dad's
Speaker 4: story is wild too. So anyway, growing up with those stories.
Speaker 4: It emboldens me in a way that how dare I not?
Speaker 4: It's like, how dare I not? And so I think
Speaker 4: when we story tell, when we share appropriately, right like
Speaker 4: with contacts like anchored in community building, you find your
Speaker 4: people like you're able to.
Speaker 3: Find your people.
Speaker 4: So I said, Okay, I'm just going to be a
Speaker 4: beacon and we're going to find each other. And if
Speaker 4: it's not for you, just keep it moving.
Speaker 2: I love that you Know you mentioned your parents here.
Speaker 1: Do you find that now that as you've become a parent,
Speaker 1: you find that there's things in your parents and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I never thought I would do that. And then okay,
Speaker 1: now my mother, like do you find that? Do you
Speaker 1: find little things like that?
Speaker 4: Well, anytime I listened to like hours on end of NPR,
Speaker 4: I realize that I.
Speaker 3: Have become my mother. I used to bemoan the hours
Speaker 3: of NPR in the.
Speaker 4: Car growing up, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 4: literally her. But yes, I have moments like that all
Speaker 4: the time. I had no preconceived notions of what kind
Speaker 4: of parent I would be. I just really try to
Speaker 4: be in any chapter of my life and just bring
Speaker 4: my value system.
Speaker 3: And if I don't know it. I'll figure it out.
Speaker 4: It's just my game plan for everything. But of course
Speaker 4: you understand. I think when you become a parent, you
Speaker 4: understand the breadth of the humanity of just raising humans,
Speaker 4: and you have much more compassion for you know, the
Speaker 4: limitations that our own parents had.
Speaker 1: I mean the limitations when I look at the amount
Speaker 1: of things that you do, like not just teaching classes
Speaker 1: on your own, having a corporate role within the organization
Speaker 1: at Peloton, building a family, and then also your business
Speaker 1: is okay, we've got the new web three platform, Swagger Society,
Speaker 1: your third book. I really marvel at the amount of
Speaker 1: things that you have done. Where do you find the
Speaker 1: energy for all of these things? Where do you find
Speaker 1: the time for all of these things?
Speaker 3: Well, it's all about choices, right. Time is a currency.
Speaker 4: So I'm really very prudent and intentional with how I
Speaker 4: spend my time.
Speaker 3: But honestly, the energy piece is it's back to basics.
Speaker 4: It's it's not a sexy answer, Like I get asked
Speaker 4: this question a lot, and it's like you're.
Speaker 3: Feeling around down.
Speaker 4: Okay, have you had a glass of water and consumed
Speaker 4: a vegetable in the last twenty.
Speaker 2: Four hours, like.
Speaker 4: Really, you know, I mean obviously like get yourself checked out,
Speaker 4: your blood work, da.
Speaker 2: Da da.
Speaker 3: But like we know what to do. It's just when
Speaker 3: we're in the throes of life that we don't do
Speaker 3: it right. And we know it.
Speaker 1: We know it.
Speaker 3: How many podcasts, how many books, even if they're my books?
Speaker 3: Are you going to read before you're like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: know what to do, you know. So I take care.
Speaker 4: Of those things, like I control the controllables. I feel
Speaker 4: pretty impeccably, you know. For me, I sleep minimum nine
Speaker 4: hours a night. Like once Athena was sleeping through the night.
Speaker 3: It's like goodbye. I sleep nine hours period.
Speaker 4: And Drew and I my husband, I really really create
Speaker 4: care that our home is like high vibration, Like there's
Speaker 4: a single person that has passed that threshold into our
Speaker 4: home that isn't of that same energy system.
Speaker 3: We take it really seriously. So I keep my circle small.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: My social interactions are high vibration, really intentional events, and
Speaker 4: that fuels me and.
Speaker 3: Fuels my spirit. And I revisit that audit.
Speaker 4: That I did as a lawyer often and I think,
Speaker 4: like I'm in X season of my life. Now, what
Speaker 4: pieces kind of need to bend so I don't break.
Speaker 3: And I'm also I ask for what I need. I
Speaker 3: don't martyr myself to any area of my life. I
Speaker 3: don't bemoan. Oh I'm this person. Oh I'm an executive.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm a mom.
Speaker 4: There are elements of each of those roles that can
Speaker 4: be really hard. But I have to have critical conversations
Speaker 4: with myself and the stakeholders in my life and say, like,
Speaker 4: this doesn't work with me.
Speaker 3: This does. And when I show up with the.
Speaker 4: Right energy and the right intention, people make money, We
Speaker 4: get to finish lines, and we achieve what we set
Speaker 4: out to achieve. But that's not going to be done
Speaker 4: if I dilute myself and I learn that.
Speaker 3: You know, I've made mistakes along the way, and I've learned.
Speaker 2: That, So saying no must be a piece of that.
Speaker 3: It's my favorite sentence. No, It's a complete sentence.
Speaker 4: I love it, and I absolutely think that we should
Speaker 4: become more comfortable saying no because the lukewarm yes is
Speaker 4: as I think what, I think, it can really erode community.
Speaker 3: Actually, I think it can really erode businesses.
Speaker 4: The lukewarm yes, the yes that said without a true
Speaker 4: understanding of purpose, and obligation.
Speaker 1: I think so many people come to your classes and
Speaker 1: the conversation that you bring for a support for them,
Speaker 1: like a cheerleader for them. So, when you're looking to
Speaker 1: evaluate a new opportunity or feeling like you're not so
Speaker 1: sure how to enter a new space, what does that
Speaker 1: personal board of directors look like for you?
Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh, there's a lot, you know.
Speaker 4: Thankfully, I have now befriended like some folks who you
Speaker 4: know in previous iterations of Robin, you know, I just
Speaker 4: read about them in books or listen to their podcasts,
Speaker 4: you know, so I can lean on some pretty amazing
Speaker 4: titans of industry now that I'm very fortunate to call friends.
Speaker 4: And I actually my husband and my family are like
Speaker 4: my og wolf pack. And even if they might not
Speaker 4: understand like all the contours of a business decision or
Speaker 4: what I'm actually experiencing in the day to day, they
Speaker 4: know me. They know my value system, they know my objectives,
Speaker 4: so that sometimes that just is enough of a touch base.
Speaker 3: For me to make the decision on my own.
Speaker 1: Okay, So with all of these businesses, all of the adventures,
Speaker 1: all of the ventures, I feel like the question is,
Speaker 1: why are you going to stop pivoting.
Speaker 4: Literally never, I will always pivot. I mean, it's such
Speaker 4: a beautiful I'm so glad that this is the pod
Speaker 4: because we have such a capacity to iterate, and I
Speaker 4: think that that's so freeing when we give ourselves permission
Speaker 4: to self define a finish line. I find that really
Speaker 4: liberating because it means that you can always course correct.
Speaker 4: And the pivot for me is that a full conversation
Speaker 4: that we're able to have with ourselves to ask like
Speaker 4: is this as good as it guests?
Speaker 2: But if it could be better?
Speaker 3: And why not me?
Speaker 4: And that requires I think that our greatest moments lie
Speaker 4: in that little bit of tension, that little bit of friction,
Speaker 4: Like there are moments of like that little bit of
Speaker 4: friction where we're like back to that monkey Bar's analogy,
Speaker 4: like should I and.
Speaker 3: I live for that?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I have to ask you my favorite question
Speaker 1: to wrap up this conversation, which I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to wrap up.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you all night, and I
Speaker 1: think this audience wants to hear from you all night,
Speaker 1: but I do, unfortunately, have to have to end. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you my favorite question, which is
Speaker 1: what is one thing in your life that at the
Speaker 1: time you saw it as just a total low, and
Speaker 1: now in retrospect you see that it launched you into greatness.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I believe failure is feedback.
Speaker 4: During that time period when I was I had left
Speaker 4: the age and see, but before I joined Peloton, I
Speaker 4: was like, Okay, I'm going to become a leggings an
Speaker 4: athletic word designer. And I invested money, I hired, I
Speaker 4: had fab I mean, I was going. I was like
Speaker 4: gonna go to Asia. I mean, it was like a
Speaker 4: whole thing. It was like, I'm fresh designer now, and.
Speaker 3: If anybody's a fashion is that's not how it worked.
Speaker 3: You just that doesn't that does this.
Speaker 2: Not how it works?
Speaker 4: So I poured a lot of money into this, and
Speaker 4: then I just ended up with reams of fabrics that
Speaker 4: in my East Village apartment that never got made apart.
Speaker 3: From like two ill fitting samples. And I realized this
Speaker 3: isn't it. I had to go.
Speaker 4: I knew in that moment I had to like go
Speaker 4: full force into this. This wasn't a side hustle. I
Speaker 4: realized that really quickly. I was like, there's no side
Speaker 4: hustle into this. You have zero background in this. It
Speaker 4: would have been achievable, but it would have been my
Speaker 4: whole life. I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you
Speaker 4: in that capacity, in this capacity, So that felt like
Speaker 4: a big failure. It was a financial investment that did
Speaker 4: not pan out, and you know, it was the thing
Speaker 4: that I thought was going to be my next mark
Speaker 4: and I had to sit with that mistake and you
Speaker 4: know the bank account balance that was no longer as big,
Speaker 4: but because I didn't have the next thing yet, I just.
Speaker 3: Had to sit with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And speaking of pivots, that taught me that pivoting
Speaker 4: is different than failing, Like intentionally saying I'm course correcting
Speaker 4: this no longer works isn't the same as never reaching
Speaker 4: the finish line. Like in racing, there's something called DNF,
Speaker 4: like you do not finish, and it could happen for
Speaker 4: any number of reasons, injury being a primary one of them.
Speaker 4: They're very valid reasons for dnfing. But in my mind
Speaker 4: it's always been like, you must finish. DNF is not
Speaker 4: an option, and so it felt like a DNF to me,
Speaker 4: like qualitatively, and now in retrospect, I'm like, thank goodness,
Speaker 4: because there's no way you could have done all these
Speaker 4: other things if you hadn't pulled the plug on that.
Speaker 3: That was the right call.
Speaker 4: So it's a good example to me that some pivots,
Speaker 4: she needs to be intentional and well before the finish line.
Speaker 1: I love that so much. The perfect note for us
Speaker 1: to end on. Thank you Robin so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: It's been so incredible, so incredible to have you. Robin
Speaker 1: is due with baby number two any day now, and
Speaker 1: we're so excited for her. Since our interview, Robin has
Speaker 1: continued to leave Peloton in her roles as VP of
Speaker 1: Fitness Programming and as head instructor. You can catch her
Speaker 1: thirty plus weeks pregnant on the bike. Be sure to
Speaker 1: follow Robin and her many ventures on Instagram at Robin NYC,
Speaker 1: and you can get her books Strong Baby and Strong
Speaker 1: Mama anywhere you buy books. I know my kids love them.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of She Pivots, where
Speaker 1: I talk with women about how their experiences and significant
Speaker 1: personal events led to their pivot and eventually their success.
Speaker 3: Be sure to.
Speaker 1: Follow us on Instagram at She Pivots the podcast and
Speaker 1: leave a rating and comment if you enjoyed this episode
Speaker 1: to help others learn about it. A special thank you
Speaker 1: to our partner Marie Claire and the team that made
Speaker 1: this episode possible.
Speaker 2: Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1: She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced
Speaker 1: by Emily Eda Voloshik, with sound editing and mixing from
Speaker 1: Nina Pollock and research and planning from Christine Dickinson and
Speaker 1: Hannah Cousins.
Speaker 2: I endorse she Pivots.