How I Built Resilience: Live with Sadie Lincoln

While 70 percent of Barre3's locations remain closed, founder Sadie Lincoln is noticing a surge in subscriptions for their online workout platform. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:45Guy Raz?

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• 1:30Guy Raz?

  based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one Hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people?

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• 2:54Guy Raz?

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• 3:36Guy Raz?

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• 4:21Guy Raz?

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• 5:06Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Hey, everyone, and welcome to How I Built This: Resilience Edition. This is where we've been talking with entrepreneurs about how to think creatively during this really disruptive moment. And one of the hardest-hit industries in recent months has been fitness. Thousands of gyms and studios around the country are trying to figure out new and creative ways to serve their customers. That's also happening with Bar3. It's a studio exercise program that blends ballet

• 5:50Guy Raz?

  with Pilates and yoga. The company has around 160 studios across the United States, most of which are still closed. Sadie Lincoln is the founder of Bar3. We told her story on the podcast back in 2017. And we called her up this week to hear about how the company's been able to shift to a virtual platform. So Sadie, first of all, your family is OK. I know you're in Portland, and your company is based in Portland. And I'm assuming you've been, all your team's been teleworking and Zoom calls and things like that?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Almost every single studio was closed for a long time. We have about thirty percent-ish starting to slowly open. But other than that, we've been, we've been on Zoom.

• 6:36Guy Raz?

  We did a whole week on the restaurant industry, which is kind of a canary in the coalmine because it was the first industry to really get hit hard. And the fitness industry obviously also really hit hard. As you know, yesterday, I think it was yesterday, 24 Hour Fitness filed for bankruptcy protection. They're going to shut down, I think, one hundred and thirty of their locations over the next few years. You actually worked there for eleven years and left to launch Bar Three. Tell me about the situation with Bar. About thirty percent of your locations are open, but seventy percent are still, still shut. I imagine this is not an easy moment for the, for the company.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  No, on so many levels. This is one of the most hard, profound, important moments of our history at Bar Three. And I, we're not alone. That's one comfort, I suppose. All business is going through this right now. And it's surreal for me to hear about 24 Hour Fitness going bankrupt because when I was there, our tagline was bigger, better, stronger, and we were unstoppable. We were growing at a rapid speed. And it's also interesting because we've really tested, Bar Three has really tested our like crisis resistance

• 7:55Speaker 01

  muscle during this whole COVID quarantine. And, and we shut a hundred percent of our studios. And within twenty-four hours, we got on a call, crying, with our franchise advisory board and our leadership team and all of us just deeply saddened about and fearful of the unknown. And within twenty-four hours, we came out and we said, you know what? We are not closed. We're opening a virtual studio. And we opened livestream classes in our living rooms with babies and cats and dog slamming and, you know, let go of sort of the precious nature of our premium brand that way, but so dedicated to staying connected with our community and.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Luckily, um, some of our studios have remained amazingly ninety percent pre-COVID revenue because of the loyalty of their community, really having an emotional connection with them and knowing the owner personally on a personal basis that I'm thankful in this moment that we've franchised, um, that we've grown an empowered model that way because I think our communities have really stepped up to support. Our owners and our owners have worked their tails off, worked so hard. Um, so I think community is, is key. Uh, overall, just to be clear, we're at, our studio business is probably around fifty-five percent pre-COVID.

• 9:17Guy Raz?

  Just to be clear, I mean, your locations are, these are franchise owned and operated. Do they have autonomy, obviously, given the, the restrictions in their states, um, on how they want to proceed? Like, if they're in a state where, you know, businesses can open, can the franchise owner make that decision on, on, on her own?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, every single owner, it's truly her business. We have, we're a hundred percent female led, led right now. Um, it's her business and, uh, legally, legally her choice, and that's the empowered franchise model. And at the same time, what's been really powerful to see is, uh, collective wisdom amongst all of our owners coming together, uh, regularly to share best practices and the latest knowledge that we, we're all gathering in our different geographies about how to be as safe and, um, attentive as we possibly can while really innovating and creating a new way for people to work out at home. All, you know, kind of all in one.

• 10:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I'm, I'm interested in, in, in this idea that you said, like, within days, we kind of pivoted to a, a virtual model. Um, and you mentioned, I mean, Bar Three is a premium brand. There's a, you know, they're beautiful studios for those who haven't been. Um, they, you, you offer childcare at many of the locations, I think, if not all the locations. Um, it's a very kind of peaceful, beautiful, clean space. Um, it sounds like going to a virtual model was a little bit, there was a little bit of sort of uncertainty about whether you would be able to match the Premiumness that you offer, but it sounds like you just said, you know what? We're, you know, we're in a crisis moment. We gotta do this. We just gotta go.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and not only our studio was a premium experience, our online streaming workouts were our premium. We've been, we have beautiful set production. We have trained instructors who have, who have trained for years to be in front of the camera. And it's very different to teach a class to a camera than it is to a group of people. Very different skill set needed and also a whole set of um fear and insecurity. As soon as you turn the camera on, there's just a whole nother level of like shutdown that happens about really coming across real. So um yeah, we had to let go of that beautiful production and, and, and I, I remember distinctly.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  The team just, we kind of asked ourselves, what are we afraid of? Like, go, try, let's do this, you know? And when we gave all of our owners and ourselves that permission to be messy, um to fail. And then, you know, pick ourselves back up and ultimately triumph. Um, that's probably been my favorite um silver lining of this whole experience is to see that happen. And, and to really acknowledge that we are an empowered company that way. And, you know, we've had this beautiful online streaming service and we have subscribers in 98 countries. It's a really strong, and now it's done, you know, significantly better. Um, because so many people are working out at home, they're subscribing to that.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  But what we learned is that our studio clients don't care. Like, they don't really want that. They want their instructor that they know. They want their owner that they have an emotional connection with. And they don't care if she's in her house with dog hair on her yoga pants. Like, actually, I, I would venture to say like that better. I think there's an intimacy that we've all felt through this experience. That's, that's pulled us together in a really powerful way.

• 12:59Guy Raz?

  Basically, you have had a premium streaming model where it's basically instructors doing it via Zoom or Instagram Live or however they're doing it. I mean, it sounds like you've seen a real spike in people kind of signing up for the virtual classes.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, overnight, it was so interesting watching, like, I started to watch the Today Show because I was home, and the commercials, even like Uber or major brands were acknowledging this era. And in those commercials, they were usually featuring people working out at home. That was the main dialogue. People taking care of themselves at home. There was a massive campaign within days of quarantine about the power of working out at home, which, you know, drove our online subscription business significantly, which, thank goodness, we have. You know, that's really helped us sustain and be strong right now and helped us all move and be happy, probably more importantly.

• 13:58Guy Raz?

  I was talking to a friend of mine who's a fitness instructor and just kind of talking about what this means for the future. I mean, is the future of fitness virtual or kind of a hybrid virtual and in-person?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Well, what I know is that humans crave connection and being together. It's a basic human need, and we know this. This is data-based, right? Loneliness is taking us down. It is an illness. In fact, loneliness is as much a predictor of our longevity as smokiness now. We need to come together in community. And when you come together in a group with music and alignment and in a sense with this empowering physical experience, that fights lonely. So I don't think the in-person experience is going away, and the digital model is here to stay.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  So many of us have learned that, oh my gosh, I don't need to drive across traffic, um, you know, for a forty-five minute class that takes me forty-five minutes to get there. I can press play during naptime and get my workout in right here. And that's, that's really liberating, right? Um, really meeting, um, people where they are and where they need to be. And also, some people don't feel comfortable being in public. I know on my more introverted days, you know, I'd rather be literally and figuratively at home in my body uh, and have more permission to make it my own and honor what's right for me in that moment. And I think we're, we've all, literally, everybody in the world has learned that in the last two months.

• 15:38Guy Raz?

  I, I love that you're reminding us, anyone watching, that you are an introvert because you are also such a public face of Bar Three and, and anyone who knows Bar, um, and Bar Three knows Sadie. Um, and, and have you also been leading exercise classes, fitness classes?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I continue to. I've done, uh, well, I did a bunch of livestream ones on Instagram. Honestly, those are my favorite classes I've ever taught, ever. Um, they were, because I was so raw and real. And in my living room with, um, my sons, who's fourteen, was the camera guy. Um, my, my daughter and my dog were the like backup dancers. You know, Chris would jump in every once in a while and, um, you know, I just taught what was present for me in my heart. I didn't choreograph anything. I just was like, literally gave everybody the same experience I needed. And there was just this sense of like togetherness that felt so good for me. And honestly, being in my home as an introvert felt really good, too. Um, yeah, and I, I just taught our first class.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  We just opened Cedar Mill and we're testing opening Cedar Mill here in Portland, Oregon. It's our biggest studio and we have a garage door that opens and I, um, I had four people in class. It felt like two thousand eight when I first opened. I kept saying it over and over again. Um, I, I really feel like I'm opening again for the first time with a whole lot of wisdom. But it really feels like the beginning again. It really is a new start for me and all of us here at Bar Three. It's pretty amazing.

• 17:11Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, we'll hear from Sadie about some of the changes coming to Bar Three and how her approach to leadership has evolved in quarantine. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This, Resilience Edition from NPR.

• 17:31Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, Resilience Edition. So if you haven't heard the episode we did on Bar Three back in 2017, it's well worth checking out. Back then, Sadie told us the story of how she kind of had a personal crisis in 2008 that led her to launch Bar Three. I mean, it reminds me of the podcast episode that we did with you back in 2017. I remember you were describing just like being mentally and physically just broken. You know, I think you said something like, "Fitness is failing me." You were a fitness instructor. You were working at-- you were working in marketing and for 24 Hour Fitness. And you and Chris left. You left the Bay Area and you moved to Oregon and you started again. And I think the thing you talked about at the time was how that personal crisis for

• 18:14Guy Raz?

  you actually fostered innovation. That's really when you were-- all your engines of creativity were on fire. I wonder if there's a parallel to this moment. I mean, do you sometimes feel that same kind of creative energy on your best days right now?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  100%. You just nailed it. With strong, clear constraints, a clear problem, combined with purpose, and I would say, an empowered team, innovation happens. Creativity happens. And when I started Bar Three and really grew into Bar Three, I would say when I grew into Bar Three around maybe 2012, I realized, oh, my gosh, we are so conditioned to exercise because we are manipulated for a long, long-- years and years and years of conditioning and manipulation around the fact that we should buy fitness so that we can change

• 19:16Speaker 01

  our body, change the shape of our body to fit into an ideal that's imagined in the future that's not us. Who is going to succeed in that model? So Guy, I, that's what's happening right now for me with the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm going to just skip to the punchline that I do, and my optimism around, I do believe we're going to innovate. I do believe we're going to change. I do believe that greatness will come out of this. And we are in the dark right now. We are in the hard stuff. As similar to reckoning with that I was feeling not enough and shame around my own body and not living up to the ideal.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I, I've gotten going through a lot of those same feelings. Being very self-aware that I am a white woman in leadership with immense privilege. And confronting my own white bias around that. That has led to me unconsciously building a company of leaders who look a lot like me. And realizing that systemic racism is real and just even understanding that. And that we have been conditioned for hundreds of years around systemic racism. And that very much like fitness, it's a practice and fitness to be empowered in our bodies and alive and honest in our bodies as they are. It is a practice to fight racism.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  It's hard work and it's an inside-out job. You have to, you know, look inside and see that. And, and have teachers around you, just like in our studios, like you need a teacher, you need a guide. And then ultimately our philosophy is, yeah, you need a guide, but you have your own agency. The job, your job is to be empowered from within and then listen to your body and to take shape and to move with purpose. Based on alignment of what you need. And that's very much how I feel as a leader right now. I need teachers. I need equity, diversity, and inclusion teachers around me. I need. I need to hear the hard conversations from the BIPOC community. Hard, real conversations and hold space for that so that I can learn and then take steps forward.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And all of us here at R3 can learn and take steps forward in a purposeful way. To answer your question in a really long roundabout way. So many parallels to 2008 for me. And that's what I mean by we're going to reboot with a whole lot of new wisdom and purpose. And just like the early days, we're probably going to mess up along the way and just pick ourselves up and try to be better.

• 21:49Guy Raz?

  Sadie, I mean, jumping on that idea, talking about racial justice and injustice. You've come to the last two How I Built the Summits and you facilitated a leadership circle with this is something that you do as a leader with your leadership team. You bring them together and you guys have these very deep and meaningful and candid and raw conversations. And this is part of your whole approach as a leader. A, are you able to do that in the same way now virtually? And B, have you started to convene those conversations around around race, around your industry and race? And around ideas that you want to kind of bring out and uncomfortable conversations you want to have, starting with your team?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yes, and I'm thankful that we have practiced this idea of circle in our organization for 12 years because we're primed in a way for this moment of holding space. And what I mean by that does to go back to circle leadership. The role of circle leadership, me as a leader, if I'm holding a circle, if I'm and you can just think about sitting around a dining room table or around your boardroom table or right now in Zoom. So yes, we're doing it through Zoom. The job, your job is to listen and to hold space so everybody is seen and heard and not afraid to fail, not afraid to speak their truth. That builds community, it builds trust, it builds debate, it builds innovation.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  It ultimately builds culture because people on the team know, know in real practice that they're seen and they're heard. Everybody wants to be seen and heard and know they matter and that they're contributing. And right from the quarantine moments, that's what we did. We circled up on Zoom and we allowed the tears to flow, the anger, the frustration, and the certainty of that connection. So we made a concerted effort to meet on Zoom in small groups, large groups consistently. Flash forward to right now in this moment, like I can't all of a sudden be an expert and have a plan, right? My job as a leader right now is really learning and understanding and listening

• 24:00Speaker 01

  to the BIPOC community and specifically our clients who have reached out and team members. So I think it's the most important thing we can do right now is hold the conversation, hold the space for all that.

• 24:13Guy Raz?

  I remember in your episode, you told a story about how you once like met Howard Schultz at an event and he was like, yeah, email me. And you actually did email him and then consulted with him just for leadership advice. And he's widely considered to be a really great leader of a business. It sounds to me like your leadership growth has sort of been on kind of like in this hyperdrive mode, like you've grown as a leader more in the last three months than maybe in the previous five years.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Thousand percent. The headline for me is, it's not about me. It's not about me. If people are upset right now directly at me, I am here to hold that space and to not take it personal because racism isn't about me, right? That's more important than my image, protecting myself, feeling sorry for myself. And same with the team, letting it go, listening, learning from our owners. I mean, I have 120 invested owners who are teaching me right now, actively teaching me right now, how to innovate, how to lead, how to be resilient.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  It's always a job to be a student as a leader.

• 25:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah, which I think is a really important lesson because there's a perception that, you know, the person at the top has all the answers. But as you have made very clear, the the person at the top needs help learning how to lead constantly.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Constantly. And how do how to simultaneously learn be a student while making executive decisions? While moving the business forward? I mean, we need to get out of this hole. We need to get, we need to move. We need to create strategy and and plans. And, you know, so there is a little bit of switch tasking there of of this desire to to take more time and to really investigate and grow and learn and read every book I can get my hands on. And an urgency to do it now. I've had to check myself quite a bit on that front. And really, I mean, back to the Black Lives Matter movement and everything that's happening in that space because that's just what's present for me right in this moment is

• 26:28Speaker 01

  this woman that I follow now, Andrea Renee, I believe her name is, gave me a new term that I think is really important, performative activism. Performative activism is rooted in a motivation to show up like on Instagram, let's say, to preserve or protect your image versus doing something that's super thoughtful and and based on truth. And I've had to really, really check myself on that front. And ask myself before I post anything, before I, am I doing this because I feel like I have to? Or I should, or they won't like me if I don't? Or am I doing this because it's something that's true and about our commitment to sustain change and growth?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I think that's tricky for us. I think we all want to move to go right now without without doing the work first, without being thoughtful first. And we need to be thoughtful first, otherwise this movement will not be sustainable. The headline will go away. The protests will go away. All of us need to, right now, set our foundation. And there's so many of us that are beginners. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us, white leaders and privileged, are new at this. We need to set a foundation of practice, so it's sustainable, so that we practice over the long haul, how to look inside, learn, and then proceed with purpose, so that we change the system. We change the model, which is going to take time.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  It's going to take time and commitment.

• 28:02Guy Raz?

  Sadie, in five years from now, when you look back, what do you want to take from this moment that will make what you do better, and make your team better, and make your company better, and make your values stronger?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  I'm going to quote Glenn and Doyle, "We can do hard things." We can do hard things. Just because it's hard and can feel scary, it doesn't mean we have to be frozen or retreat back to comfort. We have an opportunity for greatness right now. And I believe in Bar Three so much, and I believe in so many companies right now. And I feel this complete sisterhood and family of other businesses that are going through the exact same thing we're going through at Bar Three. And I hope we can look back someday and say, "Thank goodness we went through that." My favorite quote, I probably said this in the last podcast, because I always talk about this, but it's "It's the sand in the oyster that makes the pearl."

• 28:58Speaker 01

  The sand, the rub, the discomfort. Within a shell, a contained health space, creates a gem. And we are all really uncomfortable right now. And I think that's good. We can do hard things, and we can create a new future for my kids, for your kids, for their grandkids. And it's already happening in our classes. It's happening in real time in our organization. I'll give you an example. The dominant conversation on our social media right now, under Black Lives Matter, is around access. And we were, we just had our studio design team meeting and we came in with greater urgency around lowering our costs so that with the lens of let's

• 29:41Speaker 01

  open our doors wider and do they need to be so precious? Do we need to have it be that expensive to build out? Or could we figure out a different way of doing things so that more people can come in and move with us? That's cool. To me, that's really exciting. You know, that feels like innovation to me in a positive direction that will also help business and we all need the business to thrive. I hope we look back someday and we're, we thank ourselves like, wow, I'm so glad we went through that because if we didn't go through that, we wouldn't have been able to extend our reach like we have.

• 30:14Guy Raz?

  Sadie Lincoln, co-founder of Bar Three. Sadie, thank you so much.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  It's my sincere pleasure.

• 30:19Guy Raz?

  That's an excerpt from my conversation with Sadie Lincoln, the founder of Bar Three. To see our full interview, you can go to facebook.com/HowIBuiltThis. And if you want to see all of our past live interviews, you can find them there or at youtube.com/NPR. If you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience Series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by Candace Lim with help from John Isabella, Julia Carney, Gianna Capadona, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Thanks for listening. Stay safe and I'll see you in a few days. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.