Classpass Founder: Quitting My 9-5 Led To A $1 Billion Business: Payal Kadakia

Payal is the founder of Classpass, the app that’s helped millions of users find their passion. Her own love of dancing encouraged her to start a business which enabled anyone, anywhere to find something they loved to do. When Payal’s parents moved to America with no money and no connections, they had to completely start their life from scratch. Payal grew up in a home where her mother often wasn’t home, working late-night shifts to keep her family going. How far Payal has come. Today she shares exactly how she got there. The sheer determination with which she ruthlessly sets her goals and priorities, and then systematically chases after them with everything she’s got, was hugely inspiring to me, and I’m sure it will be to you too. Follow Payal: Twitter - https://twitter.com/payalkadakia Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/payal Payal's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/LifePass-Groundbreaking-Approach-Goal-Setting/dp/1399706756 Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I think society goes, success is get this job, get married, get a house. What does that do to you? It just really makes your life feel small.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  The founder of CrossFit. Monthly fitness program.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  A billion dollar founder. Wild, good duck, yo. When I would watch my parents not really fit in, it sort of made me realize maybe I don't fit in. And then be told I smelled or I didn't belong somewhere. Everyone wanted to box me into something. And I just refused to be boxed. We spent half a million dollars building a product that didn't work. Was I exhausted? Yes. Was I lonely? Yeah. I missed family things. I missed weddings. I was just not around. I have learned at this point, like, time means more to me than money. I want to make sure my priorities are more reflective of the human I want to be in my life. If you go towards purpose, I guarantee your life will be more fulfilling.

• 0:52Steven Bartlett?

  Do you believe that everybody has a purpose beyond the nine to five?

• 0:55Speaker 00

  I do.

• 0:56Steven Bartlett?

  How do you find it?

• 0:56Speaker 00

  So, first of all.

• 0:59Steven Bartlett?

  So, without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO USA edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:17Steven Bartlett?

  Paimon, when I read someone's story, one of the first questions I try and answer when I'm reading through that, especially their early years, is I'm trying to identify what it is that made them either an anomaly or hungry. I have a kind of a thesis that much of people's drive and their ambition, especially the people that I sit here with, comes from kind of some kind of pain or trauma or early experience that molded them. So my question to you is what made you hungry?

• 1:45Speaker 00

  You know, when I was younger, I got to taste something that was so magical, which was dance. And it was this place in my life that it wasn't about the physicality of actually dancing. It was the ability to make other people feel. Through something that I did. And to be able to realize that as a human being, you can have that type of influence, power, connection to other people. And to feel that when you are four or five years old was just this magical experience for me that honestly, nothing else in my life could compare to it. And once I uncovered that,

• 2:28Speaker 00

  I always wanted to feel that in anything I did. And I strived in all the work I did and all of, you know, the different careers I've had in my life and the different, you know, art I've done. I've strived always to go back to that intention of how do I give to others and make them feel something in their life? And that's really been this anchor for me and its purpose at the end of the day.

• 2:55Steven Bartlett?

  And that started at five years old?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, when I was really young.

• 2:59Steven Bartlett?

  With a dance at a wedding?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was just a random dance performance that for some reason I started dancing and everyone started watching me. And it wasn't anything that was a structured performance by any means. It was very much just this organic thing that came out of me. And I really just loved it. And I realized actually in a deeper way that the other part of the hunger came from when I danced and felt that feeling, I felt like the most authentic version of me. And I realized that I was in so many settings where I didn't always feel like I could be me. And whether that was, you know, being an Indian girl in the middle of a town where no one looked like me, or sometimes being with my Indian community,

• 3:45Speaker 00

  but being in a town that where I was a cheerleader and I didn't fit in there. I realized that so many parts of me never felt whole. And I was always showing up with one little strand of me, one little strand of me there, here. And I felt when I performed and danced, especially Indian dance, I felt like the most whole version of who I was.

• 4:07Steven Bartlett?

  The resistance you felt and the struggle you felt of trying to, I guess, conform to two different communities at the same time. So tell me about trying to be an American in a town where there's, you know, 300 people at your school and you're the only people of Indian heritage. How is that?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  I think one of the most interesting parts of it is so much of this comes from the parents, not really from the kids. And when I would watch my parents not really fit in, it sort of made me realize maybe I don't fit in. It was sort of this interesting way to look at my parents and know that they felt uncomfortable and then look at myself and be in different settings and realize, wait, I don't look like everyone else. And then be told I smelled or my food smelled or I didn't belong somewhere because my hair color was different was just a very interesting place to be.

• 5:02Steven Bartlett?

  Kids said that to you?

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember, like, I mean, I talk about it in my book, but there were some, some really harsh moments, you know, and when you're young, you're, you're impressionable, right? Things can scar you for a very long time. And I think for me, the goodness was that I did have this place of dance that made me feel grounded and made me feel whole. Because if I didn't have that, I think the trauma that I was probably going through by not fitting in would have just burned a hole so deep in me that I'm not sure how I would have been able to recover. But I had this light, right? And I think that's, you know, going back to what you were asking, it was the light that I saw that there is something beautiful out there for me to go and do for the world if I can just hang

• 5:48Speaker 00

  on to it and fight for it. And it was a fight for me to even hang on to whatever my identity was, right? I mean, we talk about our identities and in all these labels, which I really don't love, like whether it's Indian American CEO, whatever all these labels are. It was really just, I think my whole journey in my life. Was a fight to be myself in any setting and not have people tell me what to do. Right. I think we all struggle with that in our whole lives and probably why I had to be a CEO, because I don't like anyone telling me what to do. But it really stemmed because I think throughout my life, everyone wanted to box me into something. And I just refused to be boxed.

• 6:27Steven Bartlett?

  Did your parents want to box you into something?

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Of course. I mean, my parents, you know, they sacrificed everything to come to America. They obviously wanted my sister and I to have successful careers, which, you know, amounted to a few different industries, like be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer, or, you know, and then the other part of it was get married, you know, obviously at like a normal age where you could cook for your family and be a good wife. Right. These were sort of the, these were the expectations that were set in my life. And I think that's really the hardest part is when you are constantly brought in your life in saying that you need to live by the expectations of others. You end up either rebelling or you conform.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  And I always wanted to make my parents proud. So I knew I did what I felt was at the core part of the value. So for example, if it was getting education, I thought that was important too. I wasn't going to sit there and rebel from getting education. But there came a point in my career trajectory where I had to say, okay, like I have checked every box in this. Now I have to do it my way with the way I really want to feel and not conform and rebel. And I think that's really the whole formula of people knowing when to rebel and when to conform.

• 7:44Steven Bartlett?

  You referenced that you were looking for a different feeling after checking those boxes. What was the feeling you had when you were doing that job?

• 7:52Speaker 00

  I had trained myself my entire life to do well when people told me to hit this mark in my life. Right. And that's like, in a way, that's like how I developed the skills in my life to, to always propel myself and execute and make sure that I was able to, you know, be responsible and move forward in everything I did. But I felt no deep.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Fire or passion or love towards it, right? I wasn't jumping out of my bed to go to my office to go and work for my clients. Right? I was doing what I had to because, you know, I knew it was, was again, expected of me.

• 8:32Steven Bartlett?

  When you, you must have friends that are living a life that is expected of them. And you can start to see as the, the years go on, the consequence of living a life that is expected of you.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 8:43Steven Bartlett?

  What would you say to those people? And what lessons have you learned about living a life expected of you?

• 8:47Speaker 00

  I mean, that's not the way to have a fulfilled life. You can have a life and you can probably check all the boxes and make your people proud in your life, but you're going to be on the other side of it and feel empty. And that feeling of emptiness is the worst feeling anyone can ever have. And I think people come to it at different points in their life. They either come to it when they're 20 or they come to it when they're 50. And that's because they haven't done the work to actually ask themselves, what are the expectations you want for your own life? And that's the problem. I think we're never taught that, right? No one's ever asked us what we want for our own lives. And I think society goes and tells us, okay, success is get this job.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Success is get married, get a house, have kids, you know? And especially for women, it's even, I think, even a bit more of a closed road. And that, what does that do to you? It just really, it, it makes your life feel small, right? Because it makes you feel like you can't get past it to go and live for your dreams. And ultimately, you know, and I've been there in my life where I have felt like the road has closed in and it's left me feeling hopeless. And that's the worst place in the world to be is feeling hopeless. The best thing you could do is feel like you can go and do anything, change the world. And I think the more you taste it, the more you want more of it in your life.

• 10:10Steven Bartlett?

  At that phase in your life, were you? Battling somewhat with your North Star, that light you referenced earlier, which was dancing, but also your, I guess, your nine to five.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:22Steven Bartlett?

  And what, tell me about that battle and how dance ultimately ended up winning.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  I remember always having this bounce in my step. Like, I would walk to work in the middle of New York City, choreographing in my head, listening to the song I was performing. Like, I, in a weird way, was like embodying this life that, of what I wanted to be. And then I would get to the office and I would do my work. And, you know, once again, like, I love the Steve Martin quote of be so good, they can't ignore you. Like, whatever work I do in my life, I will do 150% if I say yes. But I knew that something was wrong. I never, I didn't want to live like that. I didn't want to feel like I was hiding so much of who I was. And as my nine to five, which, by the way, in consulting, isn't a nine to five. You work like 80 hours a week. I mean, that was my life.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  And I, as I realized that if I wanted to commit to that career path, that that 80 was probably going to go to 90, it was going to go to 100, was going to be traveling, and I was going to have to say no, more and more to the thing I loved. I just realized I wasn't willing to make that trade off. And I think that's sometimes the hardest thing people have to think about is, what are you sacrificing? What's the trade off in your life that you're making? And I just wasn't willing to make it at that point. And I, I had done so much in my life at that point where I felt like I had achieved, according to everyone else, enough to start taking a little bit of a path to being rebellious, right?

• 11:56Speaker 00

  And I think that's really when I started to do a lot of work to say, what can I do to bring all parts of me to the table?

• 12:04Steven Bartlett?

  When you make that decision to leave Bain and Company,

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:06Steven Bartlett?

  the management consulting firm in New York, was there like a series of catalytic sort of moments or pivotal moments near the end of your time there that made you think, oh, fuck this? You know, like, I read about a meeting you had, a performance review.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's literally the opening of my book. But, you know, a few, a few things happen, I would say. So first of all, most people stay in consulting, like at this, this job for about three years, then you go off to business school. It's sort of the usual route people take. So I was in my third year there and a few people can kind of stay on and just continue there. I really wasn't interested in going to business school at the time. I wanted to live. I wanted to like be in New York City and feel the energy of it. And so my third, in my third year, I had a performance at, in the middle of Times Square for, for this big unveiling of Usher Your Rise, Madame Tussauds statue, which was an important thing.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  And Usher Your Rise is one of my icons, especially as a dancer, she's a huge Bollywood actress. And the week before, a client meeting gets scheduled at the same time as my performance. And I'm, you know, my clients are big clients. These aren't, these are Fortune 500 companies. These aren't small clients by any means. And, and we're meeting like the CEOs, you know, CFOs of the company. And I remember talking to my boss saying, hey, you know what? I really want to go to the performance. I'm not like a big part of this meeting. Is it okay if I miss it? And we talked about it really briefly. It wasn't a big deal. I didn't feel bad about it. I went to the performance. It went, it went well. A few months later, we're sitting down, talking about, you know, review and she's like giving me feedback. And she says this thing to me, which just triggered me.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  And it was, is this the job you really want? Like, I don't think that you want to be a consultant. And I took that in my heart as, oh, my gosh, she doesn't think I'm good enough, right? And I just kind of went through how throughout my life. I've been taught to be type A. Everyone tell me I've done a good job. And so my initial reaction to her saying that to me was, I'm going to prove to you how good I am. Right? That's like the natural type A reaction is to say, no, no, what do you mean? Like, I love this job. I really want to be here. And the more I started thinking about that, the more I realized she was right. I didn't want to be there. It was not the life I wanted. It was not the career I wanted.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  And that's when I decided to start looking at other jobs that would give me a bit more of the flexibility I wanted in my day to day, but still pay the bills.

• 14:35Steven Bartlett?

  And that's when you move over to MTV?

• 14:36Speaker 00

  I went to Warner Music Group.

• 14:38Steven Bartlett?

  Warner, alright, okay. And there's this really interesting balance that I see in you, like, which clearly shifts in your life where you feel like you're a, and correct me where I'm wrong here, but you're quite a good, like, conformist in terms of expectation. And then slowly rebellion starts to creep in. And it was just, just had me thinking about like the probably, if there is a right balance of conformity and rebellion in our life. Cause conformity makes sense, you know, in some regards, you can't just be a total rebel. You know, we'll all be living out in the desert or something.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:07Steven Bartlett?

  But just the interesting balance I see in people like you that I meet of, I mean, a lot of them start as kind of conformist or a little bit more people pleasing, especially first generation immigrant families.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:17Steven Bartlett?

  And then that fails them.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:20Steven Bartlett?

  In terms of fulfillment, happiness, mental health. And then that's where the rebellion starts to.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  I think that's the key. It's, it's rebelling for the right reason. If that makes sense, I always believe that I was rebelling for purpose.

• 15:35Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  Right? And if you're rebelling for a purpose.

• 15:39Steven Bartlett?

  Destroying force.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's justifiable, right? Dance wasn't something that was just, okay, pile, go and do this because it's a hobby. Like it, it was this place for me to bring together so much of my trauma, actually, from when I was younger. It was this place for me and, and, you know, my dance company was this Indian American dance experience and. It was about me bringing together the pile who got made fun of with the pile who danced at her Indian festivals and bringing all of me together to say, when the world doesn't want to accept the different parts of who I am, I'm going to show you what it can look like, right? Like, that's really a big part of what I've realized in my journey is when people have told me parts don't fit together, I find a way to put them together and show

• 16:23Speaker 00

  you even a more beautiful experience, right? And I believe even ClassPass was really the epitome of that, too, in my life, is bringing parts of me together that I would never have been able to bring together in any other way. And, you know, I think so much of when we're rebelling, it's about fighting for something. I wasn't, I wasn't trying to rebel, I was fighting for my passion. I was fighting for my purpose. And, I mean, isn't that what life should be about? Is fighting for something like that?

• 16:54Steven Bartlett?

  Amen. When you leave Bain and Company, though, is there a part of you, because that expectation is, it's, you never really, never really fully shake it, right? Is there a part of you that whispers in your ear and goes, you failed?

• 17:07Speaker 00

  I mean, what was hard was all my colleagues, right? That at that point, who had gone to Harvard, gone to Stanford, you know, I was comparing myself to them. And I felt like I was taking a step back compared to what they were doing. But one of the other important things I learned during this time, and I think this is an important part for all of us at any phase, especially when we're going through these transitional times, is I also embraced a new community, right? So I obviously didn't just define myself by my Bain and MIT friends. I had this huge artistic dance community that was sort of like growing, this Indian American community that was sort of coming around me. And that made me feel whole in a different way. So instead of constantly being around people, I felt

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Less than, I went and found a community I belonged in, even though it wasn't the one that I would have, you know, naturally feel, felt inclined to go to. And I think that's another important thing, especially when we're exploring these decisions and identities. It's, you know, back to the light thing. It's, sometimes it's not the people we think are going to give us the light, who give us the light. So find that new community that makes you shine.

• 18:16Steven Bartlett?

  It's such an unappreciated point of resistance for people that are trying to make an adjustment in their life. I hear it so much. People say, I want to leave that situation, but I'm scared of losing the community that comes with that situation. That could be a city, it could be a job, it could be a partner. Sometimes your lives become so intertwined that you think, well, if I lose this partner, if I lose this job or whatever, then I'm going to lose all of these people. And that really keeps people trapped.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  I agree with that. That's a really good point. Yeah. I mean, and you can find new communities, you know? And I think you have to remember that the people you surround yourself with are your choice.

• 18:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Right? And I've had different communities show up for me at different times in my life, right? For me, it was the different communities that made me the entrepreneur I was. It was my business community that helped me build ClassPass, but it was also this girl who was going to ballet classes every single day with my, with my dancer friends, who also was thinking about the classes that they, people need to take in their life. And it was that unique combination of my traits combined with the different experiences I was having, that enabled me to build what I did ultimately.

• 19:23Steven Bartlett?

  You talk about, so you, you managed to get a, now a job you consider to be more of a nine to five, where you've got time in the evenings to, to dance and you end up setting up your own sort of dance company. How'd you get to, from there, to that pivotal trip to San Francisco that introduced you to the world of tech?

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. So in those two years when I was at Warner Music Group, I started tasting leadership and entrepreneurship, right? I started tasting this idea of what life could look like when I was living to my own drumbeat, right? And we put on a few shows in New York City during that time that honestly, like, just were so well received from people. The momentum of that, the feeling I felt of my community support, it made me just start feeling confidence in my ability to go after my dreams, right? And I think this is an important part of the journey that we also forget is that it's the confidence in the small stuff that actually builds the confidence towards the big stuff, right?

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Because it's not, it wasn't, "Okay, pile, just decided to go quit her job one day and start a company." It was this series of small steps, right? It was putting on a show for 150 people that went well, then putting on a show for 1,000 people that went well, then saying, "Wait, let me think about my life in a bigger way." And that's sort of where I was at that moment. So I wanted to explore new career paths that I could take, and that's why I decided to go out to San Francisco, and it changed my life.

• 20:47Steven Bartlett?

  The point you made about the way confidence is built, I think, is so, so important because I think a lot of people think, they see people like you now, sat here, after all this, all you've achieved, and they think, "How do I get from where I am, sat on this sofa, in this job that I'm in, that I hate, to being her? It seems like such a huge canyon I have to cross, that it feels like you must be from another planet." So that, when people see you at the finish line, it can sometimes be quite demotivating. It seems like, but what you've just said there is, in fact, there's these small, it's a staircase, small, one tiny step at a time, building like subjective evidence in yourself that you, you can do a little bit more than you thought.

• 21:28Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm curious as to what makes people like you take, take that small step? And it sounds like it's, you're just driven, that this purpose is dragging you.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Purpose, 100%. If, if I wasn't driven... To make an impact in the world, I wouldn't do it. I mean, you know, you know, yes, like I could go and get a good job and do all of that and live like the expected life and be fine, but that's not fire, right? That's not me taking my hours of five to 10 p.m. after work and reserving studio space and getting girls together or, you know, working till two, three in the morning to make reservations for people to get to class. Like, that's a very different why, right? And I think that's why I go back always to, how do you find that why? Like, what is that light that your life is always about? And I think, you know, and I feel very blessed that I found something that made

• 22:23Speaker 00

  me feel a sense of service so young, because nothing compares to it, you know, no, no amount of money, no amount of like, you know, whatever press or, you know, any of that is ever going to compare to the feeling of touching somebody's life.

• 22:40Steven Bartlett?

  So many people, like, again, my DMs are like, how do I find my why?

• 22:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:43Steven Bartlett?

  And it feels

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Good question.

• 22:44Steven Bartlett?

  Almost like a privilege, doesn't it, for people that have figured that out? And there's people, I don't know, that will be listening to this in the morning, washing the dishes, driving up and down the country in a delivery van, whatever it is, thinking, I know I'm capable and deserving of more, but I just don't know what it is. Do you, do you believe that everybody has a, a, a, a purpose beyond the nine to five?

• 23:06Speaker 00

  I do.

• 23:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah?

• 23:07Speaker 00

  But

• 23:07Steven Bartlett?

  How do you find it?

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's, it's already inside you. It's usually ourselves that are unwilling to listen to it, right? To ask yourself, what did you love when you were younger? Right? What, when did you light up? What, who are your role models and inspirations? What's that, what's that thing you look at for a second longer? Right? Who's that person you want to talk to for a few minutes more and why? There is something pulling you there and you have to be willing to go down the path of exploring it and trying, trying it, right? And I think that's really the hardest thing is we put so many blocks on ourselves, right? And, and I get it. I mean, our society tells

• 23:51Speaker 00

  us, this is the way to live. It, it does not tell you to live purposefully and to go and chase your dreams. I mean, that's not, I mean, yes, we do. In the Instagram world of life in quotes, I get that. But the structure of our life is not actually built that way, right? And like you just said, I mean, you compared it to the nine to five, which is about making money, right? And I think actually, and I have a whole chapter where I talk about money, because money is the most trapping thing. That's the reason people aren't willing to do it. Usually you know it. And I always ask people this one, they're like, I don't know. If you had all the money in the world, how would you spend your day tomorrow? That's like a very good way to start exploring. What would I do without one of the biggest constraints, right?

• 24:36Speaker 00

  That is probably on my mind. What would truly make you, light you up, right? And it's not about like buying stuff, right? At the end of the day, like, I mean, anyone who wins the lottery, like, you know that they can go buy stuff, but that's not fulfillment. At the end of the day, it's a sense of purpose, right? And I think people have to just get themselves in a place where they're trying new things. And it does honestly feel like a privilege. And that's part of also why I started ClassPass. It was because I wanted people to, in a way, live a life that I knew I was. I was sitting there when I was in my early twenties and I would spend my, you know, weeks performing for a show. I'd perform on Saturday night, invite people to come and watch me dance. And I remember I felt like I had, like I said, like this pep to my life and my step and all of that.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  And I want everyone to have that. And I remember thinking, wait a second, like you used to be an athlete. Like you were training for the Olympics. Like you were this amazing singer. And will you now just show up and go to work all day? And don't think about finding time to even explore these things? So my contribution to that was honestly creating ClassPass. That was like part of my very big inspiration for it was, how can I give some of that to other people? To go and try something and potentially have that same enlightenment in their life? So you kind of get out of your path and your routine and meet a teacher, right? That will inspire the growth in you and that reflection in you. Because most of the times, the hardest thing to do is to ask yourself what you love in your own life.

• 26:05Steven Bartlett?

  And how did you, when was the moment, because I read in, I read in your book, you know, there's certain pain points we encounter where we realize, okay, I can solve this problem. And the sort of my manifestation of the solution is this app or this website. What was the problem that you encountered and when that made you think ClassPass is the solution?

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I was, once again, training in ballet at the time. I, you know, I had my nine to five, but every day after work, I would go and train in ballet and I'd have my ballet clothes with me. And I'd been going to the same teacher for about six months at the time. And I wanted to try a new class. It was just like a very simple thing I wanted to do. I get on to, you know, my computer, I start browsing for this class. Two hours go by. It was just this terrible experience from a information standpoint, from, you know, not knowing what class to take, if it was, if it's, you know, close enough to me, what time it starts, how do I register? And that's when I started looking at other models that existed. So there were things, you know, in the US, like OpenTable, CimusWeb,

• 27:06Speaker 00

  that just made this type of information so accessible and so easy and convenient for a customer that I started thinking, what if I could do this for classes? And therefore get people to get an hour out of their life that was out of their routine to go and do something fun and exciting. So that was really where it started.

• 27:25Steven Bartlett?

  Even that, you kind of glossed over that, but that's pretty extraordinary because a lot of people encounter a problem, the issue you encountered trying to book that class. And they go, fuck, the world is not, not good enough. Or they think, they'll just think, ah, this is broken and then they'll carry on with their lives.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Oh, let me caveat that. So I had come back from San Francisco, 36 hours before that. And when I was in San Francisco, I had met a bunch of entrepreneurs. And this is my first time ever meeting entrepreneurs, right? So going back to even the whole trying new things conversation, it was really important for me to take that trip to SF. I had been sort of stuck in New York City. I'd been living this, the crazy dance life, the crazy, you know, nine to five life, and I had no time for anything else. So I was not trying new things and I needed an epiphany. I needed something to change because the two roads I was, I was on, like, they were going to crash at some point and it wasn't going to work. And I decide to go on this trip and meet a bunch of entrepreneurs and I come back thinking, what if I could be an entrepreneur? Let me give myself two weeks to think of an idea.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  That's literally the mindset I was in when I encountered that. So 36 hours later, I happened to be searching for this ballet class and that's, it was just like during this perfect period in my life. And honestly, like this is when I sometimes think like, does the universe make us do these things? Because what are the chances of all that happening at the same time? But it did. And I really remember in that moment thinking, I know I'm the right person to build this because of this background I have, the communities I've been around, the experiences I have. There's probably no one else who cares as much about dance, who then also went to MIT in pain.

• 28:58Steven Bartlett?

  MIT, which is an amazing college for those that don't know.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Right? And it was sort of this perfect combination of things that made me say, I gotta do this. And I went for it.

• 29:08Steven Bartlett?

  But that is extraordinary because a lot of people will encounter things. I'll encounter things today. I might sit on a chair and be like, this chair could be better, but then I'll carry on with my day. You know what I mean? And then I'll open the fridge and go, this fridge could be.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true. I know that.

• 29:20Steven Bartlett?

  That feels like the pivotal moment, which a lot of people who are listening to this, they'll all, they'll notice things. Maybe they don't even notice them because there's something in, when you start looking, you know, in your case, you were actually kind of looking for.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  A problem to solve. Yeah.

• 29:33Steven Bartlett?

  But it takes a certain character makeup to say, I can be the one to solve this. Also, a little bit of delusion if you look at the stats.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Fair. That's a very good point. I was definitely delusional at the time in thinking that. But you know what it was? It was more of, I want to try to solve this problem.

• 29:51Steven Bartlett?

  Regardless.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it felt so tied to everything I had done in my life. I had literally fought to dance up and for every year of my life up until that point. Why not bring the fight to everyone else? Right? Like, that's how I felt. I was like, I've already been doing this. Let's just go and, you know, make this happen. And by the way, like I'm also used my, you know, my left brain, which is, you know, my analytical side to go and do the market research and I was able to raise money. Like I, I definitely did this in the practical way too. And I was making sure that it wasn't just some crazy dream. There was, there was substance to it for sure. I mean, I wouldn't have been able to raise the capital I did. I got into an incubator. It was a good idea, right? In the way, and it was, once again,

• 30:34Speaker 00

  it stemmed from a really deep why in me. And that was the most important thing. I think that's, you know, when, you know, we can talk a little bit about the failures and the points where the product didn't work. But I was never obsessed with getting a product to work. I was obsessed with solving a problem from day one. It's how do I get people to class and not make it so hard for people to get to class? Why is it important for people to go to class? Because then they can feel what I have in dance in their life. It was just such a, like, an important mission for me that I could just never stop on it. And every day it fueled me because it was just so real for me to say, I gave this to someone. And even today, like, you know, and we've booked like 100 million hours of

• 31:16Speaker 00

  workouts at this point, you know? And when someone comes to me and is, and says to me, like, I just went and worked out because of class pass. It brings me joy because that's an hour of their life that was like what dances to me, right? That I gave them out of their routine or expectations or the way society wants them to live that they did for themselves. And that is such a gift. And I think in my life, I knew fighting for that was always a win, whether it worked or not, right?

• 31:44Steven Bartlett?

  But what if it didn't work?

• 31:46Speaker 00

  If it didn't work, I had a backup plan. I mean, when I say I had a backup plan, I mean, I went through my finances and my dad and I were very clear about how much money I had received at that point to say, I had three years to build this. I had three years before I ran out of my own cash.

• 32:01Steven Bartlett?

  And you've been, because you've been a saver, as it says in the book.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  I had saved. And so that's the other thing is, You know, because money can be the biggest hurdle in going after our dreams. And if you know you're a dreamer, and I think I always knew I was a dreamer, whether I was going to spend my money to build a company or built or put on a dance show, I knew I was always a dreamer. And so I didn't care to spend money on the smaller things in my life, right? Like, I just didn't. I didn't, like I said, I didn't travel. I barely went shopping. And by the way, these are decisions I made, right? I think it's so important. I'm not saying that because I want other people to do the same. It's about you knowing and thinking about it in a very deliberate way of how you're spending your money, right? And I was building up the savings. I didn't know what I was going to spend it on. But then when this idea came and I got to sit down, I had three years to

• 32:48Speaker 00

  go after running towards something.

• 32:51Steven Bartlett?

  Were you scared at all?

• 32:54Speaker 00

  I was excited. I mean, it was an adrenaline rush, you know? I mean, there were times where it was terrible and challenging and sucked. And but I wasn't scared. If I was scared, I wouldn't have done it, you know? I think if my fear trumped my my my confidence, I wouldn't have, I don't think I would have been able to quit my job and go for it.

• 33:18Steven Bartlett?

  When you quit your job and go for it at Warner, right? You have a meeting with the chairman, the chairman, you're 28 years old. He says something interesting to you, right? And I think this is, this is actually a, people say, people will say to you, oh, the luck. But actually, it's very much the opposite because he said that he would invest in.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, I mean, this goes perfectly with what we were just talking about is it's really, the reason I didn't get scared is because more and more opportunities and doors just kept opening for me. It was almost like the universe just started guiding me in the most beautiful way towards, towards the mission, towards the purpose, towards the answer in a way that I felt before I was blocking it, right? So the second I decided to go after building this company, one of the biggest things I had to do was quit my job. And on the day I quit, I decided to write an email to people I had worked with in my company, some executives. And the vice chairman of Warner Music Group says, hey, come to my office. I'd love to hear what you're building. Go up to his office. Probably the second or third time I've ever met him in the two, three years I was there. Tell him about my idea. He says, great. I want to invest.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Literally writes me a check for $10,000 and gives me an introduction into a big incubator that was in New York City. And I just remember thinking in my head, this is, this was the scariest door I'd ever closed my life, quitting my job. But I'm literally walking out, out of here with a $10,000 check towards my next thing.

• 34:38Steven Bartlett?

  Why, why did he give you that check in your opinion?

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Few things. One, so he was a former Bany. So once again, reputation does follow you. Right? Like this goes back to like everything I was talking about in the sense of it's always important to do good work. Because if he had ever heard, oh, pile is not good. I mean, he knew that I was a good worker, no matter what I did. Even though I didn't like, once again, love my job, I always did good, good work. And I know that I, that reputation followed me and he knew that and

• 35:09Steven Bartlett?

  We call that invisible PR around here.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, there you go. Right?

• 35:12Steven Bartlett?

  It follows you.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  It's so important.

• 35:13Steven Bartlett?

  Shows up.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Shows up. Right. Exactly. And I think that was one of the big things. And then, I mean, two, this was also like an ecosystem where entrepreneurship was a thing. But I mean, at the end of the day, he believed in me. Right? And it was also because, you know, actually this is one of my favorite things that happened on the, the day I quit. Is I would go and tell people, right? Especially people I had worked with who were much older than me, that I was quitting my job. And here I was 10, 15 years younger than most of them. And I remember everyone looking at me almost thinking to themselves, like, I wish I had the courage to do that. So I think you forget, like me quitting that day was such a, a sign of courage in my capability.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  And I didn't even realize it at the moment, but being able to make such a bold decision at that age.

• 36:00Steven Bartlett?

  28, yeah.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  Was a huge thing for even my vice chairman to see, to say, wow, like this girl is going to go for it. Right? And I mean, that was probably one of the first hard decisions I had to make in my life. I had to make so many more, but to sort of have that control over your life, your thoughts, your dreams. Is such an important way to live. And honestly, at the end of the day, to be a good leader, a good CEO, like you need to be in control of your ship and in control of your life.

• 36:28Steven Bartlett?

  I asked that question about why he invested because in my time at my company, I probably had just over a thousand employees. And there was two occasions where someone said they were quitting and they were leaving to start a business. And I went, I'm going to invest in your business. And it was purely based on one thing, which is exactly what you've described, which was in their invisible PR, they might not even have known that I knew.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:50Steven Bartlett?

  But they were great.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:52Steven Bartlett?

  They always did great work.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  That's why you have to always do good work. And like, I mean, it's, it's such a, I, and I think in this day and age, people don't feel it as much.

• 37:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Even though it might be a job you don't love, we all have to kind of in a way, like you have to earn your, earn your, what is it called? Like earn your marks, earn your stripes, earn your stripes, you know? And I think, I remember earning my stripes to, to take the leap for my dreams, whether that was in money or skills or, and I don't regret any of that, you know? And I think when people ask me, how did you do it? I spent a, I mean, it goes back to the whole conformity rebellious thing. I was earning my stripes. So then when I felt like I could leap, I had built the parachute in the plane, you know, like I, I wasn't taking a leap without anything around me. Like I had built a great structure that was going to then let me take the most rebellious of leaps, what that came towards the mission,

• 37:47Speaker 00

  right? I didn't have to like rebuild all the stuff that was about my life and like worrying about money. And this is also an important thing is like when you are starting a company, if I'm worrying about paying my bills, right? And if I'm worrying about like, do I have the skills? And I'm not worried, or I'm not worrying about the most important thing, which is can I get someone to class, right? Like the number one thing for me to focus on was my business, not anything that was going on outside of that. And that's why I think it's setting ourselves up to succeed when we are leaders, when we are entrepreneurs, to be in a place where we're not worried about the peripheral constraints in our life. We're able to focus on the most important thing at hand is so important for us to do. It's, it's what's going to make us more impactful in being able to actually solve the most important thing.

• 38:31Steven Bartlett?

  Let's go to the start then of this, the class pass journey, because I'm really compelled by, you know, much of the reason I started this podcast was because. I wanted to shine a light on the tough times in business. And I know when you're starting a business, especially a business in tech, it can be really, really difficult because you're sort of jockeying and pivoting to find product market fit and to figure out like what your customers want and how to deliver it. And I read that when I was reading about your journey, when you know, you started, you quit your job in 2011. And then you go through a long phase of trying to figure out how to get people to use this thing, how to market it and all that nightmare. Talk to me about that nightmare.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  So we went into the market with a very clear product idea. And it was a replica of what had worked in another industry. So OpenTable, which allows you to book restaurant reservations. It seemed like the right parallel to what we were doing. Go on, search for classes. But what I didn't realize was that there was a very big missing part in it. And I mean, I'll spare everyone like the little details of it, but everyone has to eat. Everyone does not have to work out, right? It was, and working out usually is something scary for people. And it's more of an aspirational thing. It's not something that you have to do every single day. So they were sort of on different planes of people's psychology, which really became the biggest bottleneck to what ended up happening.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  Because we spent a year, we spent half a million dollars building a product that didn't work. And even though I had all this momentum, like I was saying, all these beautiful doors were opening for me. And they were, and I had a lot of great, you know, what I now call false signals of success, like followers press. We ended up on the cover of Ink Magazine without launching a product. And all these things made me feel like I was succeeding, right? Because this is what success looked like to everyone else. And then I launched my product and no one went to class. It was, it was, and no one bought a class, no one was transacting. It was crooked. It was just a really, it was, this was the hardest, probably few months of the entire trajectory.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Because I, I had never really faced failure in my life. I mean, going back to everything I just told you, I had, I'd sort of done things well. And I tried to make sure that this would go well, right? By doing everything that I knew how, how to, which was let's get the press, let's build a beautiful product. Let's, you know, get as many email addresses as possible. Those were like the obvious things that seem, you know, you would do when you're building a company. But I had forgot to really ask myself if I was solving the problem I set out to. And I really think back to that moment, and even though it was the hardest, that moment is the reason I became a real entrepreneur. Like, I don't think I was an entrepreneur before that day.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  I was excited about solving something, but the day I failed was the day I became an entrepreneur. Because that was the day I really had to think deeper about creating something in the world that didn't exist. And I think it's so easy to follow the blueprints of everyone else and realize that entrepreneurship is actually about having no plan and having, you know, not following anyone else's ideas of what success is. It's about figuring out what, you know, what is it to solve your mission or your, you know, your business model that you're going after. And that woke me up. And it was a month or two period where we were trying to be comfortable. Like, it was this comfortable place we were in because we had raised money. We had just come out of Techstars. But, I mean, it was not going well.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  And I knew we were going to run out of cash if like, we didn't, you know, figure out something in the next few months. And we just, I remember like, after a few, few weeks of it, we sent this email literally telling people to go to class for free, thinking, you know, okay, like, this is gonna work. We're literally paying for the classes. People have to go. And still no one went. And that's when I realized we had just gone the wrong direction. And I needed to like, circle back up. I needed to break what we had built, just think a whole new way, re-energize my team around going about solving this problem in a completely new way, not worrying about what we had done, but worrying about where we're going to go. And that flipped everything.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  And I have been there now so many times where I've been okay with throwing away our past. I mean, people don't know this, but ClassPass has changed its name three times. It wasn't called ClassPass. I mean, even this time I'm talking about, it was called something else. And I've thrown away names, like, I've thrown away product ideas. Like, we've thrown away a lot of stuff. We've changed our pricing, our plans. And it's because it's not about that, right? It's about solving.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  The problem in the world and moving towards that and your mission.

• 43:21Steven Bartlett?

  So many entrepreneurs, though, and this is probably the mistake I made when I was 18 and started my first little tech company was they get romantic about their initial hypothesis being correct.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 43:31Steven Bartlett?

  So it's like you've got this square shaped thing and you're just trying to force it into this triangle. Because like your ego and there's so much relying on it and you know the runway, you know, you're running out of cash. And you just maybe I'll just push harder. And then all these vanity metrics can be kind of confusing. Oh, we've got lots of traffic.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Signals of success. Yes.

• 43:49Steven Bartlett?

  No one's buying anything, but we've got traffic.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 43:51Steven Bartlett?

  As you just said, like, I'm on a magazine. But then certain entrepreneurs, I think, that have the humility to say, in fact, it's not about being me, my hypothesis being right. It's about creating a product market fit.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:03Steven Bartlett?

  You know, and what was the moment when you started to get closer to that product market?

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and you know, one of the things I love saying about that is to be mission obsessed, not product obsessed. And I learned that through that journey. But, um, you know, we started then putting this discovery pass out there. So what we did learn is that, you know, we started finally actually going and talking to a lot of the studio owners and talking to customers. I think one of the things that happens in tech sometimes is you sit behind the tech. That you don't like go and talk to real people, right? And it was funny because I was in a tech incubator. So we showed up, we were working from like six AM to 10 PM every night, but sitting in an office. We weren't actually going to class and talking to studio owners and all of that.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  So once we started flipping that, we started realizing that, you know, a lot of the studio owners, they were offering a free class for people who are new. They want to new people in the door. And then customers, you know, knew about all these places, but they had fear. So we were like, how do we break the fear? And so we started building this product, our second product, which also doesn't exist anymore. It was called the passport and it was a discovery pass where you could go and try 10 different classes for 30 days. So you could go to like a spin class Monday, pole dance class Tuesday, dance class Wednesday. You can kind of, you know, it was like sort of this way for people for $50 to go and explore. This is sort of when we started realizing the whole love of variety that people had when it came to working out

• 45:27Speaker 00

  in classes, which was the magic of what we actually discovered in our second mistake of a product is that people loved variety. They wanted to. Really go and try new things. It's what motivated them. They didn't want to do the same workout every single day.

• 45:38Steven Bartlett?

  How did you learn that? The variety point?

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Well, people started going in, like they started loving this pass, right? They started loving the thirty day pass. And then they tried, they tried to actually buy it over and over again for the next month. And you weren't allowed to, because it was like a one month product. And we had literally gotten these classes for no money. It was very much a do this for a month and then you're going to go find your favorite studio and buy a pass there. We thought it was Legion for the studio owners, but it ended up not being that at all. People literally were obsessed with the variety, wanted to do it every single month and not stop. And that's when we started thinking about what if we become a subscription? We weren't a subscription at the time. It was just this one month product. And we then started experimenting with this idea of a class pass.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  It wasn't even class pass at the time. It was a class pass. And we launched it to about fifty customers in June of two thousand and thirteen. And they loved it. The next month it just kind of kept doubling and then it was exponential growth. And it just, I mean, the sales of that took over our other products. And we just knew that the monthly subscription was the way to go. And that that was the way that this model was going to work.

• 46:47Steven Bartlett?

  And that's two years in, right?

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Three years in.

• 46:49Steven Bartlett?

  Three years in, so three years of stumbling around.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  I mean, I went to San Francisco in, in July of two thousand and ten. And this is June of two thousand and thirteen, so three years.

• 47:00Steven Bartlett?

  Wow. One of the quotes from your book is that about failure being a data point, not an endpoint. And I really think that is, I wish someone had said that to me when I was eighteen. Because I saw failure as a testament of my inadequacy or something, as opposed to something I should be listening to.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:16Steven Bartlett?

  And that's a sort of testament to your journey. And then, you know, throughout, throughout that, that period, though, I think we've, how was your, as a founder, something again, founders don't talk about a lot. How was your mental health? Because I know there's sacrifice there.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Let's see, a few things I would say. I mean, I sacrificed a lot, especially in those three years where we were trying to get the product right and it wasn't working. I mean, I missed, I missed family things. I missed weddings. I was just not around, right? I mean, I was. Literally at work all day long. And if someone on my team needed me, I gave my 150% to my company. So I felt fulfilled because I was doing something I loved. Was I exhausted? Yes. Was I lonely? Yeah. I mean, I thankfully like lived with a roommate who is one of my like closest, dearest friends still today, but she was the only person I would see outside of people at work.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  You know, it was, I was living in this like closed circuit world and I don't, I don't mind that. Like as somebody who has been on a mission before, like has created dance shows where there, you know, you, there's this like intensity that happens for two weeks and you go really, really intense. You know, the thing though, the dance show is though it's ends at some point, like you have the show and it's over. The thing I didn't know, didn't realize about this one is, you know, it's, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Like the dance shows can be a sprint and that definitely got to me. And I, you know, one of the reasons I even developed this entire goal setting method was because three years in. So right when I was at this point where I realized class was gonna take off. I mean, it felt like amazing, right? It spent like three years. I was so focused.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  I'd literally like probably not talked to anyone in my life and I found myself alone for the holidays. My sister was away, my parents were in India and I was about to like literally be by myself on Christmas. And it was one of those moments for me. I always hated the holidays as an entrepreneur because it was the one, like it was the time in my life where I couldn't work through my, like my loneliness or through work, through any of my issues. It was like the one time where everyone would go and do things with other people. And I would be that person who would finally have to realize that I was by myself, right? Because I wasn't cultivating relationships at that point in my life. I didn't have time to. And so it was a wake up call and kind of going back to, you know, my mom may have been pestering me about it

• 49:39Speaker 00

  for the years before. At that point in my life, I just started realizing, wait a second, like. I knew ClassPass was gonna take off. Like, I just knew, we, I mean, we only had, we had less than a thousand customers, but I had, I had caught lightning in a bottle. Like, it was, it was so magical. I knew it was gonna take over the world. Like, it was one of those moments, as an entrepreneur, I could breathe. But I looked at everything else and I'm like, everything else is a mess. My health was a mess. I could barely work out, which was crazy for me. I wasn't dancing. I was, like, I was single. I, you know, I had a few good friends, but I felt like I, I like hadn't been there for them. And that's when I started really doing the goal setting, because I'm like, I need to have a bit more, I wanna make sure my priorities are more reflective of the human I wanna be in my life.

• 50:20Steven Bartlett?

  And how, in like a practical sense, in terms of a time allocation sense, did you get from that place to living more in line with those values of connection, community, love, and health?

• 50:30Speaker 00

  So, I, you know, I'll, the details of like what I did on that session, the first time I did it, are in the book. But I will say this, so in the next six months after I started doing that, I literally met my husband a month later.

• 50:44Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Yes. I decided to do a huge dance show at Alvin Ailey six months later, and I sold out a thousand, a thousand seats at that. So I got to do a huge performance.

• 50:56Steven Bartlett?

  You're gonna sell so many books just by saying you found a husband?

• 50:58Speaker 00

  I know.

• 50:58Steven Bartlett?

  By something that's in-

• 50:59Speaker 00

  It's like, it's really crazy, but I literally changed my perspective around love and what I wanted, and I met my husband a month later, which was crazy. And I also, you know, I set goals around what I wanted to do with ClassPass. I set goals around my health and how I wanted to live and work out on a daily basis. And I did all those things. And I remember, this is always my favorite moment, six months later, I was flying home on a plane. And when I first did this goal setting method, I had written it on a Post-it note, because I was on a plane. And I was on, I was on another plane ride, because I was always traveling. And I took it out and I looked at it, and I had done everything on my dream list. You know, and sometimes just writing down those dreams is the most important thing.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  But it was just such an important moment, because I felt more, I don't, I don't wanna say the word balanced, because that has so many, you know, wrong intentions with it. But I felt that I was very clear about my priorities and I went towards them. And I missed things too, but I didn't feel guilty about them. And I just felt so proud of myself for saying, here's what I wanna do in my life, and I'm gonna go and do it, and accomplishing it, not just obviously professionally, but personally as well.

• 52:14Steven Bartlett?

  There's like an overarching theme here in your, in your journey where the minute you become intentional about something.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:20Steven Bartlett?

  As you just go about it, the doors open.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  It's true.

• 52:23Steven Bartlett?

  Do you, do you believe in that manifestation?

• 52:25Speaker 00

  100% and it goes back to the, you saying, you know, we were talking about having a why. I think when you don't have a why, you go aimlessly and you, you know, I think you start living life thinking that you want money, thinking you want to be famous, thinking you want power and instead of thinking about like love and passion and purpose. And whenever I have made decisions that are about the former and not the latter, I've never been led in the right, in the right direction. And, you know, if that's something people can take away from this, like I think is one of, it's one of the most important points is if you go towards purpose, even if you are rebelling, right? And even if you might be pissing a few people off, I guarantee your life will be more fulfilling.

• 53:10Steven Bartlett?

  What were you like as an entrepreneur, as a, as a leader and as a manager of people?

• 53:15Speaker 00

  I would say I was very much, I had a lot of positive energy. I'm, I'm a small human, but I, I show up with all of me. I, and I expect a lot of people, I think because people have always expected a lot from me. So I'm sort of a, when, when you start working with me, I can very quickly tell if someone's going to like sink or swim, you know, because I don't tell you a lot, but I like let you go because I think to me, that's what I've had to do is just kind of, I don't want to put a lot of boxes on you. I want you to just show me what you can be at your highest potential. And I think like that's sort of, I liked giving people that room to be free and then allowing me to see what their capability is versus me saying, you need to be your best in this box that I'm giving you.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  And I've, I've found really great talent in that way.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  I've had to learn how to like hire for my strengths and weaknesses. You know, I think that's probably the hardest, the hardest parts when your company grows is you do everything in the beginning and then you have to learn to let go. And I've definitely learned that building a tribe around you of great people is the only way to succeed.

• 54:26Steven Bartlett?

  You struggled to delegate, right? In the early days?

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Um, I've gotten better at it. I've got, I've, I've realized that there is no other way to success and to build big things and great things in the world without being able to delegate. So I've become much better at it in my life and it's the only way I, I can do what is my magical thing, right? And I've, I think I've put a lot of thought into that is what part of this company is, is something that only I know I can do, right? Everything else that I know someone else can do, I shouldn't be doing.

• 54:56Steven Bartlett?

  Is that why you delegated the role of CEO to?

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. At some point, a CEO title becomes a lot of, you know, managing investors, managing team, doing press. And I was like, this is not what I want to be doing with my time. I want to be solving the problem. I want to be in with my customers, working on like interesting concepts, not spending my day in a bunch of meetings that, you know, didn't feel inspiring. So I think like, you know, and everyone's set up differently. You have to know how you work. That's another big thing is, is learning the insights of what motivates you. Like it's, it's the work you do and why you do it that ends up really mattering, right? In any job you're in. And I remember there was a point where I remember being so just disheartened and not wanting to show up to build my own company. And I'm like, what is going on?

• 55:44Speaker 00

  It was because I hated the work I was doing and I loved obviously my company, but I hated the actual work that I had to do. And so I had to figure out a way to get past that. This is like 2000 and like 16, 17. I mean, we were launching like around the world. It was so intense. It was, you know, I mean, it was magical. Like I said, it was incredible to build that. But I remember, like I said, I was showing up every day, dealing with like HR issues, legal issues, like needing to talk to my investors. I wasn't like around my customers and I wasn't going to class and around my product, you know? And that's what really fuels me as an entrepreneur and a founder.

• 56:20Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have email dread? Like I used to, at one point, I remember when my company was getting big because there was lots of chaos in my company. There was all kinds of cash flow issues. I used to like dread opening my emails. I was like, it's going to be some other bullshit from like an investor or some other thing.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I definitely, I wanted to make sure that I had more to look forward to. And I think there came a point where I was looking forward to less and less, right? And I think it goes back to what I was saying about, I didn't want my whole day to be like, oh, okay, there's like another competitor. Okay, we need to worry about this now. I didn't want my days to be about worrying. I wanted my days to be about dreaming. Right? And by the way, you have to obviously, as a leader of any of this, it comes with the responsibility, right? So it's not that, it's not that I didn't have to worry about those things. There were certain parts of it that I knew I had to worry about. I needed to be on my radar, but I knew there were certain things where I'm like, I could hire someone to really work on this and fix this. It doesn't need to take up my time and energy. And that's really where, where the combination is or where the decision lies.

• 57:19Steven Bartlett?

  So all of that passion, all of that love driven by this really deep intrinsic why, why did you step away from ClassPass?

• 57:25Speaker 00

  You know, I think at some point, and this happens, I think for so many founders, I mean, it had been a decade of my life solving this problem, which of course I'm so deeply passionate about. And, you know, I think the earliest days were when we did the most legwork and actually like figuring out the product, you know, the product nuances that were going to actually like unleash the behavior. I think it just got bigger, you know, for me. I think there were other things I want to do in the world. And there's probably other problems in the world I still need to go and solve. And it's on me to unleash myself to be able to face them so I can move forward towards them and have them even come into my periphery. I think if you're kind of stuck in the past, you don't even welcome the doors, right?

• 58:08Speaker 00

  That are, that you need to go through to, to reach your future. And I know for me, my, my future is waiting for me, you know? And it's on me to sit there and walk through the door and go, go towards it.

• 58:20Steven Bartlett?

  And was there, was there a feeling of like a loss of love?

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's a bittersweet moment, you know, it was, um, it's super bittersweet, right? I always say this, like the, the hardest day was when I stopped getting my, my ClassPass email. I mean, like it was insane. I've had this email for, for years. It was like my main inbox and, um, You know, it was, it was definitely a sense of loss. I mean, I think it's, you know, for, it's like having a child and watching your child get married, right? But it's also being able to say like, they're okay. I, I did all I could to get them to this point and being proud of that. And that's really where I'm at.

• 59:02Steven Bartlett?

  I remember that when I resigned from my company, went public and I said to the company, I said, I'm going to resign, but I have one caveat. They're like, what is it? I was like, I want to keep my email.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  Oh, you did? You said that?

• 59:12Steven Bartlett?

  I still got my email. I still have my.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  I, you know, it's funny that you say that. I think I didn't, going back to the whole, it was just been more noise, right?

• 59:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, true. You're right.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  You know, and so.

• 59:24Steven Bartlett?

  I don't check it.

• 59:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I figured you, yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  I just think it was, it was a nice break for me. I actually remember creating a new email address and it was like, no mail. And I'm like, what? You know, and it was, it was interesting because it started making me realize like, what do I want to fill that part of my life up with?

• 59:42Steven Bartlett?

  What's the answer?

• 59:43Speaker 00

  What's the answer to that? I'm, I'm sort of in the middle of it still, but you know, obviously lots of dance, you know, I think I probably have a few more big problems in the world to solve, you know? I'm, I'm only 39, you know, it's interesting because I'm young, you know, my mom and I always talk about this too. And she's like, it's interesting because yeah, like I could retire, but there's no part of me that would ever think about that, you know? But it's an interesting, it's a great place to be.

• 1:00:11Steven Bartlett?

  The valuation of ClassPass at sale is probably confidential as it tends to be. But I know that in 2020, in the series E round, it was valued at over a billion. It's a lot of money. How does that change things for you?

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Well, you know, we haven't exited. So like the company hasn't been, been sold yet. So it's still private, but.

• 1:00:31Steven Bartlett?

  Was your stake acquired or was your, your stake is still in the company?

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  My stake is still in the company. Yeah. So it's not fully, you know, fully there. But, you know, I think these, and here's the thing, the reason why that was such an important moment was because of what it really, the message it sent for women, especially in me being, you know, an Indian woman, like that was actually the most important part of it. I don't think as an entrepreneur, you should run towards numbers like that because what, what you should run towards is making an impact, right? The hundred million hours of people's lives is actually much more impactful to my business and society than hitting that billion dollar valuation. But in my case, I think it's different because I know what that represents to so many other.

• 1:01:13Speaker 00

  Girls out there who can look at something and say, wow, if she can do it, maybe I can too. And that to me is a really important part of it.

• 1:01:20Steven Bartlett?

  And that wave of press whenever, whenever someone becomes a unicorn is tremendous, right? And that will reach so, so many young women all over the world and entrepreneurs. Your partner and your, your son, completely other part of your life, Nick and Zane.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  Yep, Nick and Zane.

• 1:01:34Steven Bartlett?

  How's that been, you know? You talk about the obsession you've had building ClassPass. Entrepreneurs always struggle in, tend to struggle in managing their romantic relationships in the other part of their life. What advice have you got for me on maintaining a good romantic relationship and family whilst also striving to build big dreams?

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I, I'll be honest, I think we're all always still learning in the process of it. But I think one of the biggest things I learned is, and this goes along with a lot of the advice I had with my parents, is bringing them along the journey. Nick was with me through so much of it. I mean, when we went to go launch London, I always actually love the story is me, one of my co-founder and one of my sales, sales girls came, came with me. And so did Nick. And we had to go try out about 30 studios in, in London in about five days. And Nick just went and did some of them too. Like, it was amazing. We all just went and worked out. And he was sort of like checking out studios because we, before we put anything on the platform, we wanted to make sure they were vetted studios.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  And this was, like I said, it was like six, seven years ago, so it wasn't that much, that many reviews on studios. And yeah, like, I mean, he would come to Australia with me, come to London with me. And he was just a big part of the process, you know? And I think that's so awesome that we got to live, like, he got to live the dream with me. And I think that was a really nice part of it. I think as we've had a kid, we've just had to become very clear on priorities, right? And he is, and he's a partner at a law firm, you know, one of the youngest partners at his law firm. It's insane what he's been able to accomplish in his career. So we have to just always be very, very communicative on what we both want, right? And setting goals and. Hey, like, what do we want to accomplish this year in terms of our lives, right?

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  The same way I think about it personally, we have to think about it in terms of what our family wants to do, whether it's like school, whether it's traveling, right? What do we want to make sure we both do as a family unit, combined with, you know, our jobs and our ambition, you know? And I think it's so important, especially for women, to surround themselves with partners and people who will constantly help them stay ambitious in their life, because it's one of the hardest things.

• 1:03:47Steven Bartlett?

  What if there's conflict between when you think about what the family wants to do and what Payal wants to do in terms of your ambitions and then his ambitions with his career?

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  You have to talk it out and come up with a plan, you know? To me, a plan is the most important thing. And sometimes there is conflict, but you have to try new things, similar to pivoting, right? And iterating like on a company, you sometimes, both people have to be flexible to be like, okay, well, like, if this current situation isn't working, we're gonna try something new, right? Okay, like, you want this, I want this, what if we try a combination of this for six months? What if we, you just have to be flexible and adaptable. I think the biggest mistake is not doing anything and staying sort of stagnant in a place where someone's uncomfortable or someone's not happy and not helping the other person, right? At the end of the day, Nick being happy in his life is gonna make him the best husband to me and the best dad, and me being happy in my life is gonna make me the best mom

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  and best wife to him, right? And we both know that, so it's about saying, what does happiness look like to both, to us individually, but then us together as a family?

• 1:04:51Steven Bartlett?

  Your journey has weaved and up, down, left, right, all of it. It's been a tremendous roller coaster with so many highs and lows and everything in between. You spoke earlier about the importance mentorship has played in your life. Have you ever been to therapy?

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  Have I ever been to therapy? I did a little bit of therapy, actually, at the beginning of last year. You know, it was, I had a baby, by the way, six weeks before the pandemic. And then like my company came to a hall. It was just a really crazy time. So I had just gone to therapy to just start talking to somebody because I didn't even know how to make sense of so much of where my mental state was at that point. I hadn't seen people. I'd literally been a mom for a year, living at home, right? It was just, my life was so different than what it looked like pre pandemic at that point. And so, yeah, I have. And I, I mean, I recommend it to anyone. It's, it's sort of like a fitness instructor who works

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  on your body. You need to work on your mind sometimes and see, you know, what your roadblocks are, right? We know them like, oh my God, I feel, I don't feel strong with my left arm. Like, how do you get that stronger? We sometimes have blocks like that, too.

• 1:06:01Steven Bartlett?

  And it's sometimes, for me, it's been like, sometimes there'll be a feeling which I can't, where you just know you're out of orientation, or something's not right. I think the pandemic did that to a lot of us, which was destabilized us in many, many ways. Your journey is phenomenal. It's really, really phenomenal. And you're a really phenomenal person for so many reasons. One of the reasons why is just you're just this, from like, the minute you walked into this room, you're just this like ray of sunshine.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:06:25Steven Bartlett?

  And that's why I think I asked the question about like, therapy and your hard moments in particular, because you have, you have just an unbelievable smile and you have such an, I'm like, is this person always this?

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  You know, but it goes down to, I always believe there's the light, right? Like, I think it's the question we started with. It was, I just believe there's like goodness to give and service and, and purpose. And when I'm not aligned with my purpose, I do feel sad, right? Those are my like hardest moments where, you know, if I didn't care about sharing, you know, my insights and stuff, like, I could be, you know, somebody who wasn't happy, but I, I do things intentionally. And therefore, how can you not be happy doing the things that you love in your life?

• 1:07:14Steven Bartlett?

  So beautiful. We have a closing tradition.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:07:17Steven Bartlett?

  The previous guest writes a question for the next guest.

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  Ooh, okay.

• 1:07:21Steven Bartlett?

  And they don't know who they're writing it for. What is one thing you would do?

• 1:07:28Steven Bartlett?

  If you weren't afraid at all.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  You know, it's interesting, I'm I like mentally. I don't have many things that. I don't feel like I could solve. So it's like not mental. I probably have more physical things because I'm such a small person like I'm four eleven, right? It's like the it's an interesting thing because I feel more physically fearful of things than I do. Actually, you know what I would do? I would do. I would run a marathon.

• 1:07:59Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  And I love running. I just have never run that many miles. I'm not probably not afraid, but. Potentially, I'd have to work through what's holding me back from it, but maybe there is some fear.

• 1:08:13Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna pay attention and see if you end up running a marathon. Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom. It's so you're such a breath of fresh air for so many reasons, but your real source of inspiration and what you've what you've accomplished with with class passes is just astounding.

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  I really appreciate it.

• 1:08:28Steven Bartlett?

  And you always like humility and openness to share the truth about that, not just in the book, but but here today is I'm gonna be liberating for a lot of people. And that the whole, you know, one of the key lessons I come away with, even though I feel like I. I might have said this if you'd asked me, it's just the unbelievable importance of having and following that voice inside of us, which is there. And all the reasons we suppress it because of external whatever, whatever. But, you know. As as you I was sitting there as you're talking, I was thinking, you know what? As well, the other thing is like, even if you you try and do something else, whether it's. Management consulting, whatever, you're never actually going to master it.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's always going to be a tedious.

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  Job.

• 1:09:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. When you ended up mastering the thing that was in line with your passion, and I think that's a really important lesson to everybody who feels like they're in a situation now that might not be in line with that voice inside.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:09:17Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  Be the master of you.

• 1:09:19Steven Bartlett?

  A man.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Steven Bartlett?

  You're brilliant. Thank you so much for your time.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me, Stephen.