Tony Robbins - A look back at CEO John Foley and the rise of Peloton

[Music] the next person we're going to share with you that I'm so grateful to have and I'm just grateful that he' be will to take his time because I love to bring true entrepreneurs not people that have born in the lucky sperm Club people who started with nothing and had a vision and fought through every obstacle to make it happen and then everybody sees them now and sees them as an overnight success but John is the founder and CEO of pelaton ladies and gentlemen give up for John Foley before you meet him in a moment and what I love about him is here a guy with super humble roots you know his dad was a pilot his mom was a homemaker down here in Florida and he didn't have somebody sending him to college I see kids today sometimes and I I think no one was going to send me to college I mean you got to work for it he worked halftime so he' go to school halftime work halftime pay for it and he's somebody who you know he had some great CEO corporate jobs but something inside him said I want to do this on my own I have a vision I want to make happen I want to change this experience of Fitness in people's homes and he got four over 400 NOS from VCS after being in the technology business I'm sure some part of them we'll find out must have thought this going to be easier than it was but you've heard me share all the stories of people over the years you know the ones that have made it almost always have seen 300 400 a thousand NOS before they got the first yes and then all of a sudden there this overnight success and we all talk about here about really being successful in winter time if you can do well in Winter you can do well in every season Financial season and and this C company called pellaton has grown geometrically in winter like it's not just the winter company but holy cow they've had quarters where they've done over 200% more than the previous quarter the company today is I think they said it's projected to 4 billion in sales by the end of the year was 1.7 last year they're valued at $ 32.4 billion doll they've had a million people train in a single day they've had 23,000 people go to one class and they got 3.6 million members around the world so let me introduce you to this amazing soul John Foley John it's really a pleasure to have you here and a privilege to have you thanks for joining us super fun to be here Tony and and the inspiration is coming from your community it's it's incredible I was I was on for the last half hour it's so fun to see you and see the faces and the energy of all the people so thank you for tuning in our pleasure and listen you've built in one of the most amazing communities in the world so but I'd like to start with your roots if I may because you know Big Dreams start with people who have those dreams but won't let them anything stop them and you come from some very humble roots I read I don't know if it's true that you know I put you through through college but you were also working like at a skittles Factory will you tell us a little bit about your history your background and did that how did that inform your vision of business and life and what it takes to succeed yeah uh like you Tony I'm I'm not uh a young entrepreneur anymore so in the 70s 70s and 80s when you went to work uh to pay the bills and my dad to your point was an airline pilot for Delta he worked at the same company for 35 years after graduating the Naval Academy and fighting in the war and so in the mid 80s when I was thinking about college and so few people in the Florida Keys uh went to college so I was one of four or five people who out of a hundred who went to college in my high school um and he just wanted me to go to college uh but it was all about um I went to Georgia Tech which is called the North Avenue trade school it's going to college so that you can get a job it was very you know uh hand-to mouth colleges to educate you to get a job and so engineering at Georgia Tech had a um there's a co-op program where I did go to Waco Texas six months a year and I uh eventually was responsible for Skittles and Starburst manufacturing uh for North America but it was great experience industrial engineering and you're right I was able to pay my way through college and uh you know it's a twofer you get a lot of money in college you get to pay you have a little change in your pocket Visa other college kids which generally didn't and then you also graduate with two and a half years of incredible engineering work experience so it was good I mean it wasn't as quite as fun as another college experience but it was certainly uh com commercial and and fruitful it set you up for Success later on in life having to push through that how important is hunger for someone to be able to convert their dream into reality as you deal with so many people and now you know you got some CEO experience tell us a little about your view of what it takes to be successful in business uh because you certainly built it in many business but now this one being obviously the crown jewels thus far well it's funny in in your intro and I don't know whether I'm a humble guy or not but you certainly said I was so I'll own it for a second but uh hunger and humility uh two words that you you've brought up in in our short conversation and they're two of the most important things that we look for at peleton employees is and that hunger I find that state school kids do better than Ivy Le kids because they're hungrier and they they want to prove themselves and often times immigrants will be wanting to prove something as well and so when you look when you think about that hunger it's absolutely so important I think it's more important than you know just raw intelligence um because there's a lot of smart people that kind of go sideways in life but if you have that hunger and that drive and you're going to wake up on Monday morning and um a buddy of mine Rob Bernstein who runs a company called Koopa used to say I want to hire people that want to tear down walls with their face it's like wow that's that's ambition I love that how you know in your history who inspired you like you don't come from you know roots that would say you go run a $32 billion company did you have any Business Leaders or any individuals that were really an inspirational role models for you early on how they impact you yeah so uh when I was uh an engineer in Atlanta and then and then um uh eventually a shift manager in Waco Texas as the manufacturing plant my dad would always say you know you got to keep that job it pays well and and he pictured me there for the next 30 or 40 years uh but then I met a guy named John Pleasants who interestingly was dating my sister eventually married my sister and he had gone to a fancy a private school he went to an Ivy League um undergrad and then an Ivy League business school and he was so fancy and he saw the world through a different lens of of ambition and Entrepreneurship and he eventually interestingly Tony to your bill grow story um he eventually went over to a company called City search in 1996 in Los Angeles which was part of the bill gross Empire at the time yes that I EV I eventually join that so I'm part of the bill gross diaspora and got to benefit from his vision back then that's pretty amazing that's wonderful I I always talk about proximity Is Power that if you get in proximity with people with a different way of living life a different standard of life things can rub off on you and opportunities rub off on you tell me um you know you were the CEO of Barnes & noble.com if I understand correctly and you were responsible bringing the Nook forward and I know you're competing with some people that were ahead of the schedule for you that Amazon and it didn't really succeed most people have an experience like that especially in a corporate job they'd probably kind of hang on to it but it seem to stimulate your hunger to do what you really wanted to do instead can you tell me how did that shape you if at all yeah definitely shape me Tony uh it's a good observation uh digital media disrupted several massive categories you think about gaming when in the 80s you went to the arcade for gaming uh music has been disrupted there's no more CD stores book um movies and as we were as we I was at Barnes & Noble and actually my colleague William Lynch and and Jamie and only were largely responsible for the for the Innovation on the Nook platform but uh I was certain certainly close enough to it to see you know digital media if you can have a device in your hand and consume the content from home instead of going to a bookstore it's and there's bigger selection and the prices are better um it was it was a better consumer experience and it was obviously the future I looked at the same same thing in a in a fitness class and I said wow you could digitize this and build the similar hardware and software platform for consuming digital media in the fitness category so yeah I was absolutely piecing together the macro digital disruption and what industries would make sense and uh and luckily I was I was early on on the fitness uh Vector well you you you'd see those insights a lot of people would see those insights but not act on them what made you act on them and was there an AA moment for you where you went from well this is really interesting this could be a possibility to this is my future well I was a little uh I'm going say arrogant I wasn't arrogant but I was I was bullish on myself that I could raise money and still afford my New York City lifestyle because people it was such a good idea and I was such a proven guy in my mind's ey was 40 years old and I'd been in technology for 15 years and I'd been running companies and it felt like such a perfect person to bet on and the idea for pellaton for me felt like such an obvious future of fitness and such a big company in the making the VCS didn't respond to you right you got is it crack what I saw I saw somewhere you had 400 NOS before you got your first yes is that true that's exactly right well that Tony it's 400 institutions you're absolutely right but there was thousands of of Angel Investors too I pitched thousands of Angel Investors to get a hundred Angel checks for my first $10 million but when I when I pushed off of Barnes & Noble and I said I'm going to go off my own and start this company the idea was to over capitalize it so that I could pay myself a handsome salary and keep my kids in private school and keep the party going but it was a rude awakening that four years later I still hadn't taken any money out of the company and I was massively in debt and on bended knee and it was it wasn't quite the trajectory that I had planned what well two things did you I read someplace you had a k did you have Angel Investors first and then did a Kickstarter they do them the same time and then the followup to that question is what kept you going cuz most people you know uh somebody like uh you know Colonel Sanders goes and gets a th9 NOS you probably know the story or Disney 302 Banks you know told him no there's only guys like that nature the names you know are the ones that do that what gave you the capacity to keep going when you were you know your vision of what you thought would happen wasn't even close to true meaning people weren't jumping all over you because you had this great background what kept you going and did you start with a Kickstarter or start with angels or both yeah yeah we did we did angels and then we did a series a and then I think we were in the middle of the series B when we launched the kickstarter and the kickstarter was just kind of a four minute uh commercial or video that we put together to tell the story and we thought that as soon as people heard about pelaton they would want one and throw money at us also flawed the kickstarter campaign was effectively a failure um I think we sold 188 bikes and I knew a hundred of the people most of them were Angel Investors so it was it was it was there was nothing there but uh to your point Tony we um I I got so much inspiration from our team our my co-founders we saw it we believed in it and and I think a lot of the entrepreneurs you know listening to this today will know that if you have moments of weakness you need people around you that see the vision are optimistic and can you know lead for a couple days or a couple weeks as you are questioning and I certainly had massive inspiration my co-founders and then the other thing was the early um the early folks Who sampled tasted the dog food as we talk about in technology we would get them on a bike my wife was one of them but our friends we' come in put the head pH on and have them experience the pelaton bike even in its earliest phases and they would get off dripping sweat and they'd say wow I I want this I love it and so it was that um uh conviction from my co-founders and from the early um customers who we saw that there was a there there and we saw it clearly from day one and and it was just unfortunate that the investors were were not seeing it through for years and years well I'm grateful you persisted because I bought 14 of these things at Christmas I was really touched I'll bring it up in a moment about the letter you sent out cuz things didn't get delivered by Christmas and I always say to everybody I train it's what you do when you fail that matters most not when you succeed right and I I I thought the elegant the letter you sent out saying you're going to spend 10 times more money to get to everybody $100 million investment was amazing but let me come back just for a second here so the company was started in 2012 if I remember correctly so it's like nine years ago worth 32 billion when it wasn't working and you still had the vision how did you change your approach to get through to the investors or was it just pure Mass getting to enough people to you found the people that shared your vision yeah I uh I I think I kept the same approach I think it was just with each quarter or month or quarter that ticked by there was more meat on the bone with okay we have a prototype now we have a contract manufacturer now we have customers now we have a store now and eventually there was enough traction that we just willed into existence um that you know slowly but surely um investors got on board after they saw the results the frustrating thing Tony as a as a subscription business we would have a bunch of sales and we' go to the investors who you know were waiting to see the sales to make sure that there was a total addressable market and people you know that there was a product Market fit as it's called and I would say okay great we've got these sales in they say oh well come back in two years because you have a subscription business we need to make sure they don't churn off and I'm like come on you're like two year I I don't have enough money to make it for two years you know it was such a ating reality so you're you just pushed forward you kept improving give us a sense I mean it's unbelievable you've done this in 9 years so can you walk us through it took you four years to get the funding is that correct uh well it took us yeah we did I think eight or nine rounds of financing and so even up up to last year when we did our IPO that was a fundraising event so we've kind of always been raising money but it's interestingly Tony as as you were talking to uh your community um half hour ago about the goal of growing your business 100% that's that's been our goal as well we've grown 100% every year since we launched the company it is something we care about we growth is in our DNA and and we want to in the same way a lot an Tony it is great to finally connect with you in this in the way that you're trying to make people's lives better um we we see that as our as our mission as well and so it's not about the financial returns as much as we know that having a Pelon biker tread in your house makes Fitness easier and more fun and more entertaining and more accessible and more value and so if we have you know close to 2 million subscribers today we want to have 100 million sub subscribers tomorrow because that's more people's lives were going to impact of course I I love your drive um two things about that I read somewhere I don't know if this is true you said you want to have two you want have 100 million subscribers aren't there 200 million people that go to health club so you're just going to expand the market basically or you're going to steal half the health club's people which one is it going to be or both I think I think unfortunately it's going to be the latter just because are the model's better home is better than traveling in the same way that Netflix you know every once in a while you'll go to the movie theater but n nine out of 10 19 out of 20 movies are consumed on a device in your home now because it's more convenient and there's better selection you know when I was growing up in the 80s and the keys you'd go on Friday afternoon or Friday evening to the the movie theater to meet your friends mostly but uh there were two movies playing at the theater and at 8:00 you got to choose one of those two so it's not just a better conv it from a loc convenience from a location perspective it's a selection you can wake up tomorrow morning at and and and time shifted so at 6:22 Tony your class would start and it's going to be a 30 minute 80s hip-hop ride because that's what you want that's how much time you have that's what music you like you can pick your instructor so it's not just better location and time shifted the class starts when you want it but the class is exactly what you want so in that world it's so much better than the than the old gym model so I I I think that there's going to be downward pressure on on the gym category over time which is just an unfortunate reality of how much people like the pelaton experiences it's interesting we were talking about Blockbuster the other day because as I'm sure you remember they were doing what 3.2 billion and they had the chance to buy Netflix for 50 what was it $50,000 in the very beginning like their third year in I mean are not 50,000 50 million what am I saying but the number for them would be like 50,000 right so small and I remember seeing the chairman of 7-Eleven when they brought him in as the CEO 3 years before they went bankrupt saying what's everybody talking about Netflix for we can do the same thing better but you know he was from 7-Eleven right he was from a location you went to and you know we all have those blockages in our brain we don't even realize they're there you know they're unconscious in our nature and you know now they're gone tell me you have a you know I have a a core belief I think that you and I share which is I always tell people don't let you know perfect because perfect is the lowest standard for it I'm concerned because it never happens but don't let perfect get get in the way of great and I think you have perfect in the way of good tell me how that's informed the way you made decisions along the way where you could have got stopped if you're trying to be perfect but you kept innovating or you kept you know iterating to get where you want to go how important is that for your business and what do you think that is for other entrepreneurs yeah I think it's I'm glad you brought it up Tony it's massively important for our culture uh don't let perfect be be the enemy of good um there's another phrase in in technology um product development called MVP which is as you know minimum viable product so while you can you can picture this product that has all these bells whistles and all these features what are you going to launch 90 days from now it's not going to have all that stuff you got to distill it to something that you can get out the door and hold your head high up and then you start to iterate from there and with the especially with a software company where you can push over the air updates so if you buy a b peleton bike or peleton tread every month the software and the content gets better so I you know I used to sell uh peleton bikes in the in the store mostly in Short Hills New Jersey I would say get the bike trust me the content's going to be better better next year the software is going to be better next year and we've delivered on that every you know couple months we launch incredible new feature sets but uh that's kind of just the mentality of um you know don't don't let perfect get in the way of getting stuff out and evolving your business and iterating and making sure that next week you're better than this week you know you built such a thriving community and there have been communities that people go to you know spin classes a variety of companies without mentioning any in particular you know them all what do you think has made your community so strong what have you done obviously the experience itself is useful but what do you think has built your community to be so large and ever expanding well uh it's a good question Tony when we were creating the concept of the peleton bike that we knew that two things were true you went to a spin an indoor cycling class because the content and it was the the instructor and the music and the lights and the entertainment and the motivation and all the stuff that the the instructor created uh on on stage and that was kind of the content broadly defined there was also a second Vector though that was just as important to your point though and it was the social aspects it was seeing other people it was the in in the same way that in the in the dance and the energy that that you had 45 minutes ago you saw the energy of other people and that gave you energy and so there's there's kind of a communal uh motivation in group fitness and when the whole class stands up you stand up because it's not it's not social pressure you don't want to be the the schmuck sitting down right so that that the community and the motivation and the support and the in some ways competition but but mostly support and and um uh engagement and interactivity with the other people we knew that that was an important Vector so it wasn't just streaming the content we wanted to give build social software gamified software so that you saw the other people you see them on the leaderboard you see how they're you high five with them you can video chat with them but so we used to call it social soft sof Ware when we were building the product and it has evolved into a very powerful community that kind of took off on its own you know we kind of created a few tools but it's it's taken a whole new life and a whole new Vector um that we hadn't truly anticipated to be honest Tony but you know one of the things we teach here is for everybody is it's satisfied customers go away raving fans stay you have a different way of languaging that I read someplace what's your philosophy on really building that community and having those raving fans what's your view about that yeah so uh there's a term in in in our business in a lot of business called net promoter score that you know and it's just how willing your your your members your customers are to to um recommend your business to a friend it's very simple it's would you it's one question would you recommend this product or this service to your friends and it's a scale of negative 100 to 100 so it's a pretty big broad scale and you'll see credit cards companies or or insurance companies are often like negative 20 or something it's a yeah um but for pelaton we're generally in the low 90s which means our our the people that discover pelaton and become members and get in our community they are very happy and they're willing to tell their friends about it and uh it's beautiful it's it's an important part of the efficiency of our marketing um and we take it seriously we track it across all different parts of our business and it's mostly like like you know Tony just a commitment to satisfying your members making sure they have a great value the value that they get today um is going to be better tomorrow so you're continuing to reinvest and making them happier and making their making them more satisfied I I hearken it to um uh Jeff Bezos with Amazon Prime you know that was launched probably 20 years ago every year you got new stuff with prime for the same membership yeah and so people just people just never left and and you know so many households in in America now the world have Prime memberships and we're trying to make the pelaton membership that same indispensable Fitness subscription well that's the The Core teaching here as well is that the only way you become successful is add more value than anyone else in the marketplace but it's adding the value the customer wants not the customer you want to give because a lot of entrepreneurs they build a product for themselves but it sounds like I don't know if it's true it's like I heard are you on the top of the leaderboard you use this product yourself like are is that did I hear that accurately or are you a well I I was I was watching some stuff about you prior this morning and uh I was thinking that you're much more of an athlete than I am and I run a fitness company so I should be asking you that Tony um I I used to be a pretty competitive uh runner and and cyclist but um I'm turning 50 uh next month and uh my my hardcore days are are truly behind me and there's so many real real cyclists on the pelaton leaderboard now that I'm I'm not even close to the top I'll be lucky if I'm in the top core okay well I I love that you took something was a passion for you and and turned on so many people I'm curious you know uh Co for me was pretty tough they made my job you know literally illegal Around the World overnight it was about to do an event for you know I do stadiums usually 12,000 15,000 people for four days and nights or a week and then all of a sudden people call me up saying you're going to cancel the next thing I knew I had no choice that was we can cancel literally all over the Earth Australia London everywhere and uh and my first thing was okay well screw it I'll do this in movie theaters only say 10 people we'll do 1,200 movie theaters with 10 and then they shut down the movie theaters I'll do this in churches they're not going to leave Costco open and then shut churches and they shut the churches down but I never envisioned I'll be honest with you I said I'd never do this in people's homes because they don't have the music they don't have the group dynamic you don't have a crowd of 15,000 people but as we're discovering here we found a way to do this that's even better for many people I still love live events but you know we had 836 th000 people do a Six-Day program with me a month ago it just like I would normally go to like La 2019 would be a typical year I went to 118 cities in 16 countries that was my life right and I'd see a quarter of a million people so I saw more than a week so my question you is it's like a new world to be able to do this at what point did you know this technology did you already know it would be this size because You' been working in in digitization you know and saw what the market was are you doing more I mean I I read that I think it was March you guys trained a million people in a day I was feeling good about myself talk about you guys what when did you know that it was going to explode at this level I'm curious well Tony you are exactly why uh I believed in pelaton because I uh if you if you want to take one of these courses that you provide you want the best you don't want the the poor man's Tony Robbins you want Tony Robins right and um in the same way in New York City we would see the top instructors at the top times at the top Studios would be so oversubscribed in New York City within 20 seconds they would sell out those those 50 bikes were gone but I would say w maybe 5,000 people would have been wanted to be in that class and it's because the the the the instructor matters the human matters it's it's the reason why Tom Cruz makes you know $100 million a year whatever and and there's a lot of starving starving actors in LA because people want the best and uh and so when we when we started the the platform we said God if we can if we can allow 10 million people to take the best class at the best time from around the world and Tony because of the um the production value the content the cameras and as you're seeing you can do more more with with different production value of the content that you couldn't have done in the stadium yeah that you can do and there's with with camera tricks and camera angles and lighting and um you can do more and create different energy um that uh that was very clear to me that instead of teaching 50 people in a sweaty basement as as the uh traditional um indoor cycling or or group fitness model um had evolved to if you can scale it via digital media um you know you can have millions of people in the same class and that and the the energy that the instructor will get as as you're seeing you know I'm sure it was very energizing for you to have eight8 100,000 people because you know you're better when people are giving it back to you and so we said the same thing with our instructors and that's one of the reasons why we wanted live Studios so we've invested $50 million in a studio in New York City and $50 million in a studio in London so that when the inter when the instructor is coaching there is 50 or 60 people local yes so that they're getting the energy from that from the people in the studio and then you you know you and Fiji or you in Palm Beach and me in in the West Village yes we're feeling that energy at home yes we're actually doing that here too we have these 50 foot high or 20 foot high LED walls but I at a 40 foot high ceiling here so this wall lifts and then I can put 1,00 people in their lives so some similar thinking so you can have that and still have 10 or 50 or whatever number of thousands people around the world tell me um how did you gear up you know when you ever have a problem you know some people try to ignore it some people try to blame something out most intelligent people find a solution but a solution's cognitive the solution is not real to you make a change and the minute you make a change it creates a new problem hopefully a better quality problem right when you're growing as fast as you are how the hell did you gear up for the growth you've experienced in the last two years what did you do and then when it didn't work because there's some things outside your control obviously like covid you know how have you adapted share with us if you would because everyone has to deal with these issues if successful you know people think if they're successful there's no more problems but you and I both know that's you just have a better quality of problem but it's still a problem if you don't fulfill your customers needs that's right so we have a saying don't use hope as a method so we are operators we act owners in your vernacular we act like owners and we um you know we build stuff and we love solving problems um we uh uh yeah we we we we we love the operating side the operating side of pelaton has never been the problem um we also have lofty Ambitions and we plan for success I often say don't plan for Su don't plan for failure plan for Success because they become self-fulfilling so one of the ways we were able to keep up with a lot of the crazy covid demand was we we were expecting to grow like this and next year we expect to grow like this and so we're investing in supply chain you know when I say we're going to go from 2 million subscribers to 100 million subscribers we have a watertight plan of doing that we're not I'm just not espousing hot air to you know try to try and create lofty goals for our team we we we see it we have a plan to do it we're investing in in that and so it's again not using hope as a method and and planning for success that's beautiful and and that type of goal it's got to excite people I always tell people goals affect you whatever they are and some people think how many goals their goals to get through the day but goals like that I would certainly keep your team moving brother that's pretty exciting tell me if you would you're also you know one of things I respect about you is like you even in this culture everywhere we go we look at the planets our playground and love as our Legacy right so we're looking to give back not as a positioning mode or virtual signaling but just because it's what fulfills human beings and it gives you more drive and I saw that you've partnered I think with Beyonce and you're going to be delivering I guess these for attend black colleges would you tell us something about what you're doing in that area and would you tell us why you think it's important for companies to have some sense of mission besides their product or service and giving back to a community of sorts or maybe many communities yeah that uh that partnership with Beyonce is to give um 20,000 free digital memberships to HB students of HBCU um and that's just one part of uh of the pelaton pledge which was a hundred million pledge to fight uh social injustice in the states coming out of the black black lives matter movement and we were very excited our team got excited our members got excited and to give $100 million across the next four years was was a big swing but our board was very supportive and our team was uh super super energized but you're right Tony I uh I love this new world order where businesses are are not only um able to but expected to be a bigger part of the fabric of the communities and and you and you'll know um a couple years ago uh Jamie Diamond as part of the business Round Table formally said that uh it used to be you know coming out of Milton Freedman 30 years ago that the as CEOs and Leadership teams were 100% focused or or should be 100% focused on their shareholders and a couple years ago the business Round Table said no that's not true we're we're readjusting the expectation of businesses and leaders to include employees to include members to include communities um and uh and I love it we we we want to be an important part of the fabric and important part of move the movement forward in some ways where governments have failed us across the globe uh businesses can step in and to the extent that some of the investors are wanting us to do that I get great feedback from some of the big in institutional investors now that we're now that we're public where they say we watch what you're doing we're seeing how you're acting on the social justice front um environmental front all all the these different new vectors that you're being judged by and uh it's fun and and I love that people are noticing and I do care as a human being again my dad uh served uh the country in Vietnam and went to the Naval Academy and I I have this Great Patriotic Gene and so it's fun that um businesses are allowed to do it now and uh and we're definitely not going to default on our responsib it's something I really again want to encourage everyone listening because it as I've shared with you before all of you here you know whatever your motivation it affects you and you can't fake it if you're just motivated for yourself there's nothing wrong with that you're part of life life gives you insights if you're trying to make life better if you're trying to take care of your family my experience is you get more insights you know because like you're supporting more of life not just yourself trying to support a community it gets higher trying to support Humanity I'm not talking about virtual signaling I'm not saying what you say you know what's driving you but if you'll do that early on your mark Ben off is a good friend of mine John and he's he came to like nine of my seminars in a row when he was still working at Oracle he's a big guy he was standing in the front row and and one point he came up and met me introduced himself and uh I said I've seen you here a lot of times I said you know are you uh are you slow and kind of teasing he said no you talk about repetitions mother skill but that day he told me he said I'm leaving Oracle because of you and I'm going to start this company called salesforce.com and he said Tony I just got to tell you we're going to we're going to change business around the world and he looked at me in the face and he says we're going to do a100 million Business course this you're going to do 20 billion this year in business right with Mark so I've been on that Journey but one of the great things Mark did was in the very beginning we were talking about contribution and Mark took it to heart and he said you know what I'm going to do I'm gonna while we're small I'm going to do things I probably won't do when I'm big I'm going to give 1% of the revenues I'm gonna give 1% of our stock and 1% of our people's time and now Google has copied that you know Jamie Diamond and some others have ticked on to Those comp pieces Mark's been a real leader in that area but what I see in Mark is not only the impact but the joy that it gives him I know that it gives you that it gives me and I I hope all of you will take that to heart because you'll do more for others you care about than you will for yourself that's the nature of being a human being that's the best part of us tell me if you would what's what's the what is it that fulfills You Most At This stage of your life and how are your days filled I'm curious at this stage I mean you've got how many employees now I think we have uh close to 8,000 employees globally um and yes uh Mark has been an inspiration to me Mark benof as well to be honest Tony um he 15 years ago I believe published how uh Salesforce was doing on a women and Tech yes uh black black professionals across engineering roles and just really uh opened uh the the um the statistics of his company even when they weren't perfect even when they weren't good he said wow I I want to expose this and challenge other Business Leaders to expose it so we can at least talk about uh the problems and the opportunities and so um it's uh he's been a um a real champion of social change and uh and team culture which I which I um have been taking notes he's obviously a Visionary on that front as you well know um but what uh what I I like Mark um although be it probably a lot less successfully uh care deeply about our culture um and and I would say I'm the chief culture officer because in order to recruit and retain the best people in the world and at all these fancy jobs and if you want the best people um you've got to have a incredible culture um internally and um interestingly in today's world order the internal culture also permeates into the consumer brand as you've seen some some businesses uh misstep with social media and with um with everyone having a voice with Twitter uh you have to make sure that your team is incredible and your culture is incredible um and then think about your consumer brand so it's I'm a student of all this stuff and um uh as we get bigger it gets harder especially to your point Tony with not your inability to travel and I think you and I are the same type of people where we get energy from other people we want to be in person and so it's been I think you and I have been kind of one arm behind behind our back is with our with our leadership style that we adopted for decades and so um it's been a little challenging but I'm definitely looking forward to this fall getting back in an airplane and uh and seeing seeing these people and visiting our sites me too Eric Yan is a good friend of mine who started zoom and you know he made this possible because they used to only have a thousand people Max who could get on so he made all adjustments to help us make this happen but he even said to me the other day he said I am zoomed out from Eric who made $20 billion doing Zoom right let's go for some Q&A here from the audience ladies and gentlemen John's been really wonderful with us who's got some questions raise your hand we'll come to you right now Karina Karina where are you in the world I'm in beautiful San Francisco Bay area and why San Francisco ladies and gentlemen what's your question for John well um it was really it's really about Co and how it's destroyed my business I'm an event planner and wedding planner so I'm waiting Tony like you um but this whole move to Virtual has been amazing and I just I'm wondering how much your margins have increased with uh covid and if it was kind of this blessing or would you would peltin have been this big um without it yeah I I totally believe that pelaton is going to be one of the great consumer brands of the next couple decades um I I it's undeniable that covid was uh was Tailwind for us I mean I'm I don't want to be Cavalier it um people stuck at home and gyms closed there's no question it is it is help demand but uh uh it it to me has been an inevitability that Fitness is going to move into the home people would rather work out at the at home it's just been such a Dopey category and and it was all about Hardware going and getting on a stationary bike in your basement and staring at a wall and listening to your old 80s mix on your headphones is just not awesome so what we did was we took that stationary bike and brought in a community of people and all the software and all the content and the best instructors and the best music and the best programming and selection and your friends and you know social stuff and we've we've made it awesome so um as and same thing with our tread bringing in uh boot camp classes uh into your home with the best instructors and best music on and off the tread so uh to to your question about margin um Tony brought up the idea or the the reality that we had to Airship spending a hundred million dollar bringing in Treads and bikes from Asia so that we can satisfy the demand so obviously with commitments like that to our brand and to our members um that that would otherwise have hurt margin um uh but luckily the cost of acquisition went down so some of the things went up some of the things went down so the margin structure has increased but we've uh we've done some things that are pro consumer that have taken taken us backwards a little bit that's great thank you well I love that you're all about fun because I am too so we can see that Karina give her a hand how about there on room eight room eight I'm Michelle I'm the first the person of the first I'm the first Michelle tell us where are you in the world we are in Belgium Belgium ladies and gentlemen give it up for Belgium what's your business and what's your question for John well we do organic Super Foods uh in the Amazon reforest and uh we provide them in the easiest way possible to final consumers around the world very uh and then uh I would just like to say Tony you have really changed my life so I'm very grateful to be here and super inspired by you really I listen every day to to many of your videos and I I read the book so thank you well thank you you did it I won't take the credit but I'm grateful I could help what's your question for John so John um we are a growing company but still um a small company so we our Bott neck now is actually employees so we just have a few and we would like to have the best team but we don't know how to do that of course our budget is limited and I would like to know how was this experience for you to build a team with the people that you wanted uh establishing a culture and still having a budget so how to pass through this um yeah bottl net that we are now yeah it's a great question I I will say and this is going to be a uh not controversial but uh something coming out of Co that a lot of people debate but I think spaces matter a ton uh so I have always wanted to capitalize pel Pelon business so that we could invest in physical spaces namely a headquarters that is awesome to come to work physically so as you think about recruiting people if you have a gorgeous office where it's open and fun and you play music and there's snacks and there's coffee and there's energy the same energy that uh Tony had an hour ago if you have a place to come obviously you wouldn't be dancing around all day but but energy matters and uh and to me spending the you know $10,000 a month or $20,000 a month whatever space um however big you need and and what the cost of space is in Belgium but I think when you recruit people and you interview them in an office where they can see themselves I I've always cared about that and so from day one we invested in physical spaces where we can bring everyone together and then you energy beg gets energy and you can recruit more people but just as one small tactic obviously you need to pay pay right and you need to Market and get the um get the word out on your on your open job recks but uh physical space to me has always mattered and it's a little bit um self- selecting people that like coming to the office and like that energy and were turned on by your space and your Vibe then they'll join and and it will it will energy be gets energy very nice give her hand thank you so much how about Brett Scott there room 17 Brett Scott let's bring him up Brett where are you in the world Atlanta Georgia Atlanta Georgia a place John knows well but you're what business are you in brat and what's your question for John I'm I'm a real estate agent and a life coach I help people get from where they are to where they really want to be very nice so my question for you is more about the heart man after seeing something that you believed in so much finally succeed can you describe in detail what that that felt like I would love to hear that from you or what it feels like still yeah yeah and uh I mean funny funny you ask our stock is down 10% today uh and I don't I don't care about our stock uh but there's still so many non-believers in pelaton um so many people think that it's going to be a covid story and that you know in six months are our sales are going to go you know plummet because uh everyone who wanted a bike or tread bought it in Co and everyone's going to rush back to the gym and pelaton is screwed um so to answer your question we feel so back to Tony's words hungry and humble that you know we're at we're 2% into the 100 million subscriber goal so we're not we're we're absolutely not doing a victory dance or patting ourselves on the back we're still you know a little pissed off a lot of fire in our belly um a lot of non-believers and are still really trying to show that this is the Future Fitness and this isn't you know um going the way of you know maybe a GoPro or a Fitbit uh that that had collapsed and and these these investors you know study the the parallels and so we're still trying to show that we are a special company and so we're um you know I appreciate you asking about the heart and we and we definitely have a lot of heart at pelaton but uh we're not uh we're not content or or celebrating just yet keeping their hunger that's beautiful that's a real entrepreneur Never Satisfied that's right give him a hand thank you Brett one more how about Ann Ferris over there room let's 15 room 15 tell me where are you in the world what's your business I live in Costa Rica and Costa Rica ladies and gentlemen I'm from Chicago I just couldn't take that cold weather anymore and what's your business I have an e-commerce brand I'm about to launch a new one I support um new mothers and how they bond with their babies and help them feel beautiful beautiful what's your question John my question was you know when you were starting out that pelaton there's so much there's so much Logistics in starting that company because you have the bikes and you have the software and you have the instructors so there's so many parts that have to all come together right at the beginning and I'm kind of feel that way in scaling my business as well that I have so many parts to come together but I don't have the funding to hire people for all of those parts so I was curious if you could share a little bit of what was your journey kind of in the trenches when you were really trying to get all the pieces together to be able to launch yeah I think it's a great question and certainly was top of Mind as we were building pelaton is is pick your spots and and to Tony's Point not letting perfect be the be the enemy of good uh we partnered in in the early days with some things that we now own um we bought some manufacturers in Taiwan we now do Logistics and deliveries which we didn't do originally but what we said was we need to be awesome with the software and the content and the hardware those three things were critical we eventually got good at retail we eventually got good at Logistics we eventually got good at manufacturing but it was uh another another fun thing Tony you'll appreciate that we said a lot in the early days is you got to rob a few gas stations on the way to the perfect crime and uh we we we robbed a lot of gas stations meaning we did things that weren't that weren't perfect that you wouldn't be proud of yeah but you just get through but you got to focus on what what's going to make your business special and what's going to resonate with consumers and Outsource and try and lean on third parties that can help you um get to you know the perfect place I think it's such a beautiful answer John because I think everybody here needs to remember you can't do it all if you try to do it all in the beginning you're going to fail you have to figure out what is the core composite what does the client really love most what do they care about and overd deliver that and as John described the rest you're going to try and Outsource connect and eventually is grow and get better you'll either own them or you'll certainly have a better set of choices great answer thank you for that John John you've been really generous with your time I want to thank you I just a last question I have for you is I'd love to know if you had three pieces of advice to give any entrepreneur on the journey you've been on because you've been heads of CEOs of large companies youve built this extraordinary brand and and I love that you're 2% of where you want to be and I love your mindset but if you were going to give the two or three most pieces important pieces of information or advice you've ever heard or you'd want to give somebody what would they be the most important one for sure is finding uh partners that are high integrity that share your work ethic that you like being around that inspire you that are good culture fits for you and and the way you work because a lot of times I'll see other entrepreneurs and I'll ask them who their team is and they've cobbled together some people but it's not it's not going to work because it's not the right people so if there's people in your company that are either dragging you down or don't feel like they fit you got to solve that because it's not going to you're not going to be great with uh with people that don't fit well with you um obviously uh if if if you can get also the right Capital Partners i' I've Through The Years uh misstepped and and had Capital partners that didn't share my vision or didn't philosophically align with me or or had a different investment Horizon they were good people but they you know were thinking three years out not not 30 years out and so um to me it's it's all about the people and um and then to your point Tony setting Vision High not being your own ceiling really defining your opportunity big um while you might you might not see getting there tomorrow but at least you you know know where you're going to be 15 years from now and then set your you know your next threeyear plan um in that direction so that if you succeed you're you're getting where you want to go that's beautiful John thank you you've been so generous you have a beautiful heart and you have a beautiful mind and you got a beautiful company you got a lot of fans all around the world right now and know it's only going to grow thank you for your time brother hope to see you again [Music] soon