Faces of Marketing podcast: Sadie Lincoln, founder of barre3
Intentions become Thoughts become Things. After moving 13 times in the first 8 yrs of her life, Sadie Lincoln grew up on a commune in Eugene, Oregon. At 21 yrs old, she had a vision of becoming a teacher of teachers in the fitness + wellness world.
A dozen years later, that vision became barre3 — creating a movement of 100,000+ women in 98 countries around the world with 138 physical studio locations throughout the USA.
Tune into this podcast interview between Sadie and me on the Soundcloud audio file above or on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, or most other podcast players.
Transcript:
Ryan: Hey there, welcome to the Faces of Marketing podcast where we talk about the human stories and lives of different people and perspectives in the marketing profession and entrepreneurs and movement makers. This is your host, Ryan Buchanan, and I’m sitting in the warm and inviting home of my good friend, Sadie Lincoln, who started barre3, ten years ago to re-imagine what fitness and wellness should be for people instead of the facade that it’s become. Welcome to the show, Sadie.
Sadie: Hi Ryan. Welcome to my home!
Ryan: This is awesome. I’m sitting in this beautifully well-lit home that I’ve had dinner in before. Sadie didn’t have her two dogs around because they might have added a little barking noise in the background, which would have added ambiance, I think. And your two kiddos are out playing?
Sadie: One of them is in school and one of them still sleeping at 11:30am.
Ryan: They’re still in school — Catholic school?
Sadie: Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan: Okay. All right. We’ll get to that. Before I started off on the official part of the podcast, I wanted to give you some kudos and through our friendship I just kinda want the audience to know that I feel like one of your unique abilities is just your ability to kind of read people and read energy and I have just learned so much from you. I think it’s been about three years since we’ve really gotten to know each other well. I just want one of the main purposes of the podcast is to humanize the myths that even us as entrepreneurs create about entrepreneurs and that it’s, you know, no one wants to hear about like the whining of successful entrepreneurs, but it can be a very lonely experience.
Ryan: And so I just, I think it’s going to be fun to get some of those stories to come out. And I do also want to admit that I do feel a little bit like a copycat and a fraud — a little bit because the interview that you had with Guy Raz and How I Built This podcast is truly what inspired me to start my whole “Faces of Marketing podcast” to begin with. So with that whole ramble, I got that out of the way and wanted to kick off with a few questions — how you grew up and talk about your relationship with your Mom, your brother Miguel, and I think a lot of us have heard your story of growing up on a commune, but just help us visualize it a little bit.
Sadie: Okay. But first we have to go back to what you just said. All right. You called yourself a copycat and a fraud. And I’d like to address that because I think a lot of us entrepreneurs, we have something that’s called an impostor syndrome where we all sort of feel like that. Like, who am I to be doing this right? Guy Raz has this amazing podcast with this amazing vision and it’s well received and you took that idea and you’re making it your own and it’s absolutely you’re absolutely deserving and I know it’s going to also be a wildly, wildly successful. And to your point, I think a lot of us put entrepreneurs on a pedestal that “I can be like that.” And the truth is, and I know this just sitting around the table with our entrepreneur group, every single one of us, we have insecurities, we have vulnerabilities. Um, you know, we don’t, we don’t always have the answers. In fact, most of the time we don’t. And I think that’s just good to, to acknowledge and also to remember that we might think we don’t have the answers, but when we look inside, we really do every single one of us.
Ryan: Well, thank you. I mean, one of the things that has surprised me is how, as an entrepreneur of a creative agency, I have gotten away from creating things. And this podcast has brought that back where I get to — I mean the sound quality isn’t great and I’m just learning all these tools — and the most fun thing about it is that I’m interviewing friends and I learn these like really meaningful, cool back-stories to friends who I’ve had for a long time. I’m thinking I need to do this with my wife because, even Shannon, I feel like I could learn something from her even though she’s heard my stories like at least a thousand times. And I’ve heard her say a thousand times, but it’s just a really fun thing to have this intentional conversation about what made us who we are before the company, you know…
Sadie: the human side.
Ryan: The human side. Yeah, exactly. So, okay, let’s get to how you grew up.
Sadie: Well, how I grew up — you’re probably referring to my alternative upbringing because I know that’s intriguing to a lot of people. It’s not different to me. It’s my normal, but I’ve come to learn that people are interested in it. My mom and her best friends met each other in their early twenties, in the late sixties. They were part of the counterculture and dropped out of mainstream and re-imagine their lives. My mom calls it and she doesn’t like labels and specifically the label of hippy, but I mean, come on. They were hippies. She said we were country intellectual hippies. If she had to give herself a label…
Ryan: And it was four of her best female friend ended up being together?
Sadie: It started out the four of them. And then we added on one person when we moved to Eugene. So this was in Taos, New Mexico. Long story short, they each had children with different dads and the dads all split and out of just being practical and in a collaborative spirit.
Sadie: They raised us kids together and we didn’t always live together in the same place, but we lived really near each other. And we were gypsy, like we moved around a lot and shared resources and values and the beautiful thing is it wasn’t just a moment in time, whereas a lot of people in that era dropped out and then kind of went back to normal and somehow what they built was so magical that it withstood the test of time. We ended up moving to Eugene, Oregon. That’s where we met Susan, the fourth auntie, I call them my auntie’s. She has Chia and Kyle. Um, and then Lucia has Miguel. Lois has Lark, Dan, and Drew. My Mom has me. And Liz has Sophia. That’s the whole tribe. And we stayed together as a tribe. We still are.
Sadie: We get together on holidays. We support each other. I have this incredible extended family. I wrote a paper about it at UCLA in a Sociology of Family class and I found a term for it. It’s called “fictive kin”, which is basically your chosen family. And I think the reason we stayed together and looking back on it now, I’m really fascinated in spirituality — we had our own religion in a way — our own reason for coming together and bonding on core core values. Ours was based in Jungian Psychology because that’s what they all studied and really enjoyed. But we would sit in a circle, for example, often and share our dreams and analyze them. Basically, they were really a jumping off point to look inside for answers to be seen, to be heard and to give each person in the circle for full permission to be their most authentic self. And so that, that’s kind of the magic to how we stayed together over time.
Ryan: Yeah, it’s funny. I was talking to Jenelle Isaacson and Su Embree and we from the outside looking in, we’re like, wow, Sadie and Miguel and there’s just this like super genuine people and they happen to be phenomenally successful. We should just complain to our parents that like, why do we have a traditional upbringing?
Sadie: Because you guys aren’t successful at all and you’re not interesting either. [laughter]
Ryan: No, but it’s, I mean, it is crazy, isn’t it? Maybe it stands out because it’s, it is nontraditional. And so when someone is successful and when there’s two or three from the same commune that are just like off the charts, it’s like, wow, what’s going on in here?
Sadie: Yeah, I know. But that’s what I think is so beautiful — is everybody has a different path. There is no one way. I think it’s counter to what most of us think. Most of us think, you know, a nuclear family, solid values, really strong education, good students are successful. I’ve come to learn that often, that’s not the case that a lot of founders and CEOs didn’t even go to college. They had a rough upbringing. They learn things like resilience, depending on their own inner spirit to get them through things. And that’s really what brings success out in people over and over and over again. You hear that.
Ryan: That’s great. I love it. So you must have a really tight bond with your Mom.
Sadie: Yeah, yeah, I do. She’s arguably one of the most important people in my life. She’s my teacher, my friend, um, trusted, trusted companion. She’s really, I look up to her a lot. She’s wise, she’s confident, she’s thoughtful, open-minded, all the things.
Ryan: Is she a teacher?
Sadie: She’s my teacher but no. She’s an entrepreneur. So, she and my aunties started their own paper in Eugene based on their core values. It was originally called “What’s Happening”. Now, It’s called Eugene Weekly, which is the alternative news in Eugene, Oregon to this day. So they started that in our living room together.
Ryan: I was thinking I remembered a story that you told before. She’s kind of a social justice fighter. She’s an activist.
Sadie: Yeah, they all are. But I wouldn’t say they’re not out like yelling with campaign signs there and this, this is hard to understand, but their activism is more around I’m looking inside for answers and be more intellectual about it versus really a public figure out out in the world.
Ryan: That’s cool. Now you have a son and a daughter and your daughter I think is a year younger than my daughter, Grace and I’m just in this mindset of Grace going into junior year and starting to think about college and things like that. And so I want to put you back into that time where — how was your college discovery process? You maybe looked at a bunch of colleges and then you said UCLA is the one for me. How, how did that go?
Sadie: It’s a great question and something I like to talk about because I think as a parent of a 14 year old, she’s going into high school and a lot of the parents they know we’re all so worried about our kids being successful and finding the college of their choice and not all kids are college bound at first. And I was one of those kids. I didn’t get strong grades in high school, nor did I care, too. I didn’t even take the SATs. I didn’t look at a single college.
Ryan: How do you get into one of the better colleges in the country?
Sadie: I moved to Los Angeles to get to know my father and I enrolled in a community college called Santa Monica City College and that is when I discovered my passion for education. Uh, I really liked it. I had great professors and I did well and I transferred into UCLA. And then from UCLA, I ended up getting my graduate Master’s degree at the College of William and Mary.
Ryan: So I forgot that, that because I went to UVA, which is right next door. Yeah. So you were in the South.
Sadie: Yes. It was a good experience. I think everybody has their own path. And the beautiful thing about my Mom and my Aunties that I think did help me as I never had shame. I didn’t have an ounce of shame of not going to college or even trying to go to college. I believed in myself. I believed in my confidence that I would get there somehow. I didn’t only believe in myself and sometimes they maybe doubted myself, but my mom believed in me.
Sadie: I joke that she like really celebrated mediocracy. She’s like, “good job. You got to see honey, you did it.”
Ryan: Our families are so different. Just like straight up.
Sadie: You don’t have to have this same family structure. But we ended up kind of similar, right? I think there are some commonalities. I bet of our family though, they both, you know, loving, unconditionally loving me and allowing me the freedom to choose my own path. Self actualizing. She would say to me all the time, I know you’re going to make the right answer. Even when I was dating guys that she was like, “Ay yay yay”.
Ryan: Well, you ended up with a good one.
Sadie: And she would say, you’re going to make the right choice. Things are gonna work out, you know, she just would always, always say that she wouldn’t give me the answer. She wouldn’t say what to do or how to do it. She just gave me permission to know that I already knew.
Ryan: Got it. Well, we are going nontraditional, nonlinear here. So I’m gonna jump back to the eight year old Sadie and when an adult asks you, what do you want to be when you grow up, what was your immediate gut response?
Sadie: When I was eight, it was anything in the performing arts and probably I would have loved to be a singer, but I’m seriously tone deaf. I’m not, I’m not a good singer.
Ryan: Do you sing in the shower?
Sadie: I’m not allowed. [laughter] Chris doesn’t even let me sing happy birthday. Like I have to mouth it at birthday parties because I get everybody off tune. [laughter] That’s truly what I want. I want it to be Annie. Remember Annie, I mean the child of the eighties. I would sing all those songs at the top of my lungs. I just wanted to be on a stage singing.
Ryan: Okay. Can we hear a little bit of it?
Sadie: Not, you’ll lose all your listeners!
Ryan: No, they’ll flock. They’ll be like, you gotta hear this. It’s like Elaine in Seinfeld dancing. It’ll be played over and over again. No, thank you. I’m also. So you have this, for some of us that grew up in this very traditional way, it seems not normal, but now that you describe it, it seems like really idealistic and I’m wondering what was an obstacle that you had to overcome kind of through high school and before you got to college?
Sadie: First of all, it wasn’t idealistic at the time. I mean, it was my normal. I think I’ve romanced the story now that I’m older and I suppose a lot of us do that you look back and you just kind of mend wounds and then you see the beautiful side of things. And that’s actually who I am. I was born half glass, half full, but really, I mean there was trauma a little bit for me. For one thing. There wasn’t a lot of stability and kids crave stability. I think I moved, my mom and I counted, 13 times. By the time I was eight years old, we had a house without walls during the summer. My mom found this property that was being built, so it literally just had a foundation. It did have a toilet and plumbing, but they hadn’t built the walls yet and they abandoned it for some reason and we lived in for the summer, you know, that’s the kind of. And it was wonderful and beautiful and I actually have lovely memories from that. And there were men, boyfriends coming in and out of my Mom’s life.
Ryan: Was that living situation legal?
Sadie: Oh no. We didn’t really care about legal back then. It was definitely a rebellious spirit there. I had at that same house, house without walls. I remember the only guy I’ve ever called “daddy” was my mom’s boyfriend at the time. His name is randy. Don’t know where he is. He, I mean, there were men that came in and out. So I had lots of kind of men sort of came in and out and in and I didn’t have a stable father figure ever. I take that back. I had my Stepdad who came into my life — Bill, who ended up becoming an incredible person in my life and he was with my mom basically from the age of eight until recently they got a divorce. But, I never called him Dad. We had a different — really special relationship.
Ryan: Steady Bill.
Sadie: Yeah. And also spiritual — super spiritual. He’s still who I go to if I’m having problems and he guides me and I’m in a really lovely way, but he didn’t take on the dad role because my mom didn’t want him to. It was sort of our thing. That was our family dynamic.
Ryan: And then with your aunties and your kind of brothers and sisters, do you do big family reunions every couple of years around Thanksgiving or in the summer? Like how do you all get together?
Sadie: We, we did actually recently do a family reunion to celebrate Lois, my godmother and the oldest auntie — her 80th birthday. And that was, that was wonderful. We all got together and Miguel and I rented a huge house and we all stayed together. That’s pretty rare, but most of them are still in Eugene, Oregon and so we all kind of meander over there. In fact, this weekend, Miguel’s giving the commencement address at University of Oregon and the whole tribe is going, so he’s going to have a big cheering section with all of us.
Ryan: Not everybody knows who Miguel is. So you want to share? I co-founded this entrepreneur group called StarveUps with him a while ago, but obviously not nearly as close as you are to your brother. So you want to describe Miguel McKelvey?
Sadie: Yes. First of all, he’s my brother and he’s younger than me, but a lot taller and we don’t have the same parents as I mentioned. He played basketball at U of O. He was a good student and college-bound and studied architecture at U of O and super-entrepreneurial. Ended up at American Apparel being an architect there. Started his own company called English Baby! He abandoned that and ultimately ended up founding WeWork, which is an incredibly successful business empire and that’s what he does today. He lives in Manhattan and yeah, he’s a baller for sure.
Ryan: But the most understated, humble baller you’ll ever meet. He’s incredible! So going back to William and Mary, you were getting your Masters in Education and I recall in the past three years you saying, Gosh, when I start getting pulled in all these directions and maybe go through a hard time and start to lose my way a little bit, I come back to knowing that being a teacher is at my core and I kinda wanted you to expand on how did you know that. I guess it gives you joy, but like how do you know that that is your center being a teacher and things like that?
Sadie: Well, a couple things come to mind. Number one, I mentioned I wasn’t a good student and I actually had low self esteem and shame around. I felt stupid. Part of that is because I went to an alternative, great school but we didn’t learn the basics. So when I hit Middle School, I was not equipped with the tools. I needed to be successful and although I was really creative and I had a lot of confidence because in an art program that’s what you learn and it was very free flow. The curriculum was all over the place and I can say that I remember teachers who didn’t judge me or grade me or measure me by external measures such as grades. It was more about who I was and what I knew and what I brought to the table. And to me, to this day — a defining feature of an educator. I look up to someone who sees the best in their students and meets them where they are and actually teaches them that they are their own best teacher. And a teacher who I admire. Someone who is not a guru, isn’t someone that says I know all the answers, but that has this love of learning and curiosity and an open heart and mind. And that’s what resonates with me. And that is what I, I love just being the guide and creating a safe container so people can discover that within themselves.
Ryan: That’s awesome. So you went from graduating from William and Mary’s Master’s program and I always find that first job out of college or in this case, after your master’s degree is, what was your first real job and how windy was it to get there? Like how hard was it to get that first job?
Sadie: It’s honestly pretty easy. My motivation was I wanted to live in San Francisco and I knew I would like to do something in fitness because I ran the fitness and training program at the College of William and Mary. I had a full ride graduate assistantship there doing that and that’s what I did at UCLA as my extracurriculars. I ran the group exercise program there, so I’ve been doing this for a long time. Right out of Grad school there was an ad — back then in the paper — for this company called 24 Hour Nautilus, which quickly turned a 24 Hour Fitness based in San Francisco, CA. And I wanted to live there with a friend of mine. So I was like, I’ll try it for that job. And I got the job and it ended up being a great opportunity for me. I was 25 years old, responsible for all the group exercise and 20 something gyms. And within a year of being there, we had 40 gyms because we acquired a chain that was about the same size in Southern California and changed the name to 24 Hour Fitness. And then fast forward 10 years later, I was still there. We were at 430 gyms around the globe. And you know, I learned so much in that experience about how to scale, how to build brand, how to understand and relate to the fitness industry at large.
Ryan: Okay. So we’re going to do a little bit different thing than my question and it’s going to be… I’m going to try and describe to you what I think barre3 was addressing in the beginning. And you’re gonna correct me.
Sadie: Okay. That’s fine.
Ryan: So I think I remember you telling this story of when you were at 24 Hour Fitness and it seemed to be the entire industry was having this messaging and this core belief that you have to be hard-core and you have to sweat and you have to have pain and you’ve got to push it. And it was all super testosterone-driven. It was unattainable and it was all about muscle build and not this wellness journey — your mind, body, all working together and connection.
And you left there with your husband. Were you married to Chris at the time? You left with Chris to start barre3 together to say we can do this differently and we, you know, it’s not going to just be, you know, a twist on yoga or Pilates. There is a barre component but it is going to be creating a tribe of primarily women and giving people permission that they can work out a couple of days. And then on the third day they can eat chocolate if they want. Cause that’s good for their mind and spirit…
Sadie: Obviously! Anything with chocolate is good for you.
Ryan: But it’s like this re-imagining fitness to be free, to be yourself, but also to have a guide for being healthier. Is that somewhat on point?
Sadie: Yeah. The most on point statement there is free fitness to be yourself. Is that what you said? That was good, something like that. Yeah. Because what I experienced and I still do to this day, I still do to this day, my vision is to redefine what success in fitness means and success in fitness at 24 Hour Fitness. And there’s nothing wrong with this by the way. That model that works. It just didn’t work for me. Success in fitness at 24 fitness, our tagline was “bigger, better, stronger”. And, success meant following formulas that were scientifically based to get to a certain look of fitness, an external measure of success or to win the race, to fit into your skinny jeans, to get Bikini Ready, to have ripped abs, to lose the fat. Do this!
Sadie: All of our spokespeople were super athletes. They were incredible athletes like Andre Agassi, Shaquille O’Neal, Lance Armstrong, or supermodels — Cindy Crawford was what was our spokesperson and they were living this ideal of fitness, you know, these incredible athletic, beautifully-bodied people that we were all dutifully following formulas to emulate and look like. And even today, we are bombarded with imagery like that and messages around that, that if you do this, you will look like this, you know, do this for 60 days and melt the fat away. Right? I’m fight aging, do this. Everything is attached to an ideal and immediate gratification as soon as possible. Make it happen quick. Um, the faster, the better. Exactly. And there’s a lot, there’s something to that. I mean, we all want to be healthy. It is, it is scientifically proven that calories in, calories out equals the weight of your body, for example, energy in and energy out.
Sadie: But there’s so much more. And when we measure our success based on external measures of success, we’re not truly empowered as individuals. Whereas the me in that, my body is so wonderfully uniquely different than your body. You need a completely different program than I do. I guarantee it because that’s what makes this so beautiful. That’s what makes up humanity as diversity and there’s so much shame and exercise because we’re all set up for these ideals. None of us can really ever attain it, and so we feel shameful and we drop out only. I think it’s like five percent of the population workout regularly, five percent because in a gym and a model like that — in a gym concept,
Ryan: What is the percentage of people who are new gym members in January?
Sadie: I don’t know the exact percentage — A LOT! Yeah, a lot of people.
Sadie: Exactly. That’s an exact perfect point. It’s like this is the year I’m going to do it, and we all jumped in with good intentions and we leave feeling depleted, defeated, like exercise is something outside of ourselves instead of truly something we embody and I set out with fitness to redefine what success was around the power of community, the power of making it your own modifying posture so that they feel really good in your body. The power of instead of coming in to want a hard body, actually leaving with a wise body, knowing more about yourself and being able to give yourself permission to stand up for yourself and do the kind of exercise that actually feels really good because it feels really good and you leave feeling energized and full of energy and accomplished. Then you’re going to come back and at the end of the day, the other thing that I shout from the rooftops is exercise is not the answer.
Sadie: It isn’t the answer and we’ve been fed that for years and years and years. The if you exercise regularly, you will be fit and it’s simply not the truth. It’s one way to build muscle, to build sweat, to build focus, to be attentive, to take care of yourself, but it’s just a piece of the equation and we don’t need to put so many eggs in that basket. Other pieces are eating healthy meditation, nourishing your body in a way that’s intuitive for you. Again, everybody has their own ways of doing that. I’m being finding, being in pursuit of balance, so that doesn’t mean that you ever get to balance, but aware of when you’re imbalanced and then moving towards a more balanced state. Relationships are just as healthy as exercise. That’s been proven over and over again. When you look at areas, the Blue Zone, blue zone, have you heard of that?
Sadie: The areas of the world where people live the longest, the people who thrive, that’s really what fitness is. Thriving, being healthy, and they live close to nature. They move intuitively and they usually move as part of their lifestyle, so they garden, they cut down trees, they, they’re out in the ocean. They’re doing things in nature that are more intuitive and functional.
Ryan: Like Scandinavian countries?
Sadie: It’s all over the world. I know one of them is in San Luis Obispo, there’s Mediterranean, there’s — in a little village in Italy. There’s all these different communities. If you look it up, the Blue Zones, you can learn more about it, but one of the common forces — or common themes — is relationship and having a true connection and a village around you that supports you and so that’s what we set out to do is let’s create a community of support versus competition.
Sadie: That’s the other thing is a lot of fitness is about competing and comparing like, I’m going to do that pushup deeper than my neighbor next to me. I’m going to go deeper in that lunch. I’m going to burn more calories. I’m going to run faster. I’m going to, you know, or maybe even competing with yourself and I see that even more people.
Ryan: Orange theory is all about competing with yourself.
Sadie: Well I love, you know, I think orange theory is phenomenal, but they. That is one model of fitness that is very much about external forces, measures, numbers, and I think there is great power and looking inside for answers and moving intuitively as well. And that’s my thing is that there’s room for all of us. There’s room for external measures, there’s just a real lack in the internal measures of success which are truly empowering.
Ryan: So next question is on the name of this podcast. A lot of other entrepreneurs and marketers listen in [maybe like 10 of them], yeah my audience isn’t that big. But anyway, we’re getting there. We’re getting. There is 11 now. [laughter] So I look at iconic companies who created movements in Portland and the two that come to mind are women-run companies, they’re barre3 and Salt and Straw ice cream. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs and marketers look at that and just think, well I can just create a movement in my company. What’s the silver bullet? Like how, how do we just create this movement where there’s tens of thousands of people that are like die-hard loyalists to barre3, or to Salt and Straw or to WeWork. How did that happen? Was it you training Madonna and that all of a sudden like the rest of the world, like caught onto it? Or was it lots of incremental steps, you had a dozen women who showed up and you had daycare there and then the next year you had 100 and then word of mouth? How, how did it all happen?
Sadie: Well, first of all, the startup phase as I didn’t worry about honestly creating a movement at the beginning, I simply scratched my own itch. What do I need? And I just trusted that, you know, how am I going to balance the body in this movement? What kind of language would I want to hear when I’m taking class? Would I want to hear, “get ready for Bikini season” or would I want to hear, “find your tallest self? Do you feel stronger today?” You know, which, which kind of queuing would I want to be a part of, like what kind of teacher would I want to take a class from? And I went from there and I taught, when I opened my first studio, I taught 19 of the 22 classes a week and held babies and childcare check-in people and got to know every single client and then started to train my first set of instructors, based on — it wasn’t only my own itch now it was there’s too, right.
Sadie: And they were aligned with me and really empowered by what I was doing and wanted to continue to grow it. And it was one person at a time. And then we had the whole Madonna stage. I did train Madonna and there was an article that was in a magazine and that did of course helped me. But I have to say what was really interesting that moment in time is, there was an article in, I think it was Us Weekly about me training Madonna. And at the same time this girl-next-door blogger who had this blog called Eat Live Run, wrote authentically. She had bought my DVD, authentically, tried it and wrote about it. I had just as much traffic from her blog as I did from Madonna’s. Madonna was a cache, you know, this amazing legacy, right? We all like anyone who grew up in the eighties, it’s just like, holy smokes, Sadie! I cannot believe you did that? I’m like, I can’t either. It was amazing, but truly Jenna who did the blog was, was more powerful to me because she was more like me and she discovered it for the same reasons I did. And, because she was more like me, there were so many women who trusted her, really trusted her and then said, I want to try that too.
Ryan: Did you have Madonna songs on the soundtrack for your session with her?
Sadie: No, no. I really analyze the music. Yeah, that was. I hired a DJ and I obsessed over that playlist. Yes, it was. It was a rock and playlist actually.
Ryan: That’s awesome. Let’s see here. I know that you are a Creative and so you have been really intentional about having a consistent, clear brand throughout that process that had to be part of the mix to build trust and have this authentic voice, but be consistent about it.
Sadie: Yeah, I mean I did NOT put on my tagline like, “come and get empowered with me” and “you’re gonna find your truest self” and “when you modify, you’re going to stand up for what you really believe in.” I mean, those were the things. You’re going to honor your truth here. You know, that would have never brought people in the door. That was my intention when I taught every class, was to have everybody learned to honor their own truth and be in the moment versus trainers stripe for something outside of themselves. And to this day that that is what drives us. My tagline was “where ballet barre meets yoga and Pilates” because I wanted a descriptor to explain to people what the heck barre was because 10 years ago nobody knew it wasn’t a category in fitness. Today it’s a category in fitness, which is amazing!
Sadie: I feel so accomplished that way. I was one of the barre leaders to put it on the map. Uh, and there are people have an association with a ballet bar. They knew what Yoga was, they knew what Pilates was, and once I get them in the door, you see our symbol, which is the ‘b’ and the ‘3’ combined with a little dash on the top. It’s a nod to the ohm symbol. And truly in a way barre3 is sneaky yoga. And what I mean is this, the spiritual side of yoga that I really relate to, which is about honoring the truth, letting go of attachments, being committed to real and the power of being mindful for 60 minutes and, and now science has caught up to that. We know that that’s really good for the brain. It helps us balance our hormones. It helps us move forward and be productive all day long. And that’s what I, that’s what you discovered after you get in the door. Right?
Ryan: And I know you obsess over mission, vision, values, and it’s been a 10 year journey. And I think when we were talking in your kitchen just an hour ago, you were saying you felt really good about the team and you really crystallizing that and so that’s gonna start getting rolled out, or is it just an extension of what you’ve always been doing?
Sadie: What we’ve always done is that. I’ve just had a really hard time putting it into words on paper because I built this company on tribal knowledge and really high touch. So every single person who gets trained at bar three, we sit in a circle and instead of getting them core values and having them memorize it or memorize a mission statement or putting the Vision statement up on the wall that they see when they walk in, I have this way of pulling it out of them so it comes out from their own words versus me having them memorize it and then I reflect it back to them. So that’s how we’ve built it up to this point. But we’d never had a brief that I could give a marketing agency because of that. It’s just been about community and people all being aligned.
Sadie: So the beautiful thing is I’ve built this tribe of thousands of team members and community members and including our clients who are already speaking our vision, mission and values without them even knowing that that’s what those are and what’s a huge breakthrough for me as I enter the next 10 years of my business is being able to now create a confident marketing campaign around that and it’s around being mindful around being up empowered and authentic and real and having an enduring sustainable workout that’s not, you know, a hockey stick, kind of like I’m going to work out like crazy for 30 days, get burned out, get injured and not come back approach.
Ryan: Okay. Last two questions. So your business model, you have three different components. A franchise business with 125 locations?
Sadie: 130 now franchised — actually 132 and then 6 company-owned.
Ryan: Okay. And then you have a digital business, which is I, I am surprised by how large it is because maybe people don’t want to feel shame or like they want to just do it in their basement.
Sadie: They just want to do it on their own terms and not damage anything. They have 30 minutes while the baby’s sleeping before work. Some people really enjoy working out alone and having that autonomy and when you’re, when you work out a loan, you actually have even more permission to make it your own. Versus being in a group setting where you feel like a little bit, it’s a little more of a struggle to truly be be in your own individual truth when you’re in a group of others.
Ryan: Guess I’m just so social and I love like there’s something so powerful. Even if you’re just quiet and meditating with eight people in a room or whatever, just the energy gets amplified in this really amazing way. So I would think that people would want to be in group settings in real life. But. Well
Sadie: I think that’s it. It’s a different expression of exercise and they’re both really valid and that’s what we’ve discovered is that both are okay, there’s not one way. And again, we’ve been told over and over again that there’s one way, this is the best way and we change every day. Some days, some days I feel more introverted, some days I’m more extroverted and we have an active online subscriber base in 98 countries. You know, we don’t have studios in 98 countries, so a lot of those people might not have a studio that, who would go to a studio had we.
Ryan: And then is there a third line that’s like products and what are some of those things?
Sadie: Yeah, our retail is another revenue stream, so all of our highly curated, thoughtful retail. More and more we’re trying to just sell products that are, we love selling products that are developed by women in a thoughtful purpose-driven way here in the USA when possible. And then we have our retreat business which we’ve launched, which is really a full expression of barre3.
Ryan: Something you’re personally super passionate about.
Sadie: I love it. It’s my favorite thing to do to bring together people and you know, go deeper on all the things that you know, we care about.
Ryan: Okay. So last question, um, if you could tell the audience something they may not know about you and the context of this question is often something that was kind of a life is a life event or experience maybe from when you’re a kid or in college or earlier in life that kind of gave you the confidence or was foundational in some way that is maybe foreshadowing that you are where you are now.
Sadie: Hmmm. That’s my phone [phone ringing]
Ryan: This is like a “Slumdog Millionaire” would like the phone calls coming in. Like do you want to phone a friend for this one? Do you want to call Chris or Miguel or your mom?
Sadie: Gosh, that’s a really good question though. Right? And I’ve never been asked that. I mean that they wouldn’t know about me. I’m not sure.
Ryan: I can give you an example of me… So when I was 18, after my freshman year in college, I had a couple buddies who kind of bailed on me for coming out west. I went to University of Virginia, grew up in Maryland, and I was like, I am going to adventure and I’m just going to do this by myself. I got a job as the night janitor at glacier national park, Lake Mcdonald Lodge and I talked to myself for five straight days in the car, kind of went a little crazy listening to tracy chapman nonstop, maybe, maybe ACDC every now and then it was like totally bipolar. But I had this like unbelievable summer where I realized that like I can do anything on my own. I don’t have to, you know, when I came back to college, everyone always had to go to a party with a friend or like go somewhere with someone. I’m like, if I want to go backpacking or if I want to do something, I’m not going to let anyone hold me back for their schedule. I’m just, I’ll travel around the world, I’ll do whatever. I’ll start a company. Whatever it is, I now have the confidence to do that. That was kind of a moment in my life that was such a turning point.
Sadie: Yeah. I think to me — that’s a coming of age moment and I think a couple of them, one of them I already mentioned is driving to Los Angeles at the age of 18 with no real goals. And then just trusting the process, enrolling in city college sometimes not having a plan is when all the beauty happens. Right. I love the quote. It’s the sand in the oyster that makes the Pearl, that, that moment of discomfort, right. Um, is what, if, just trusting that is what in the same thing happened when I graduated from UCLA. I didn’t have a job. All my friends had jobs. They knew where they were going. I took a year in La and I just did what I liked. I was a personal trainer. I taught group exercise. I sort of ran around the city and just put a bunch of odd jobs together.
Sadie: And in that, I remember during that time I had time to reflect and I did this, I just happened to pick up at a garage sale, this book, it was “Creative Visualization.” It’s an old book and it was written in the seventies and I opened it up one day and I sat, I’ll never forget this. I sat cross legged in the sun on my little funky porch in my apartment. And I did this creative visualization. I followed the instructions and I wrote out this vision of myself and I kid you not. It is barre3. And I had no idea what barre was. I mean that wasn’t even. This was — I was 21. This is when I graduated from UCLA.
Ryan: And barre3 started when you were 33?
Sadie: Yeah. And in the vision, my, my, the key word that I had was alone. And I saw myself alone, meaning on my own. And I, the picture of me in the background, I had a monitor, a computer monitor with programs for women in it. And they were movement programs. And I had this whole vision for myself that literally has happened. And so, um, I don’t know. I think that’s cool. I really think, you know, you can manifest once in a while
Ryan: Thoughts become things.
Sadie: Intentions. Intentions become thoughts become things.
Ryan: Love it. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Sadie!
Sadie: My sincere pleasure. It’s been great. Hopefully we’ll get you to 12, 13, 14 listeners.
Ryan: Yes. Thanks again.
The author, Ryan Buchanan, is a social and for-profit entrepreneur with starting a diverse internship program called Emerging Leaders Internship (ELI) as well as a digital marketing agency eROI.
