Robin Arzón: Resilience Through Running

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I will always pivot.

I mean, it's such a beautiful I'm so glad that this is the pod because we have such a capacity to iterate, and I think that that's so freeing.

Welcome to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dared to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. You might remember when we hosted a live podcast recording with Pelotons Robin Arzon as a Chelsea factory here in New York this past winter. Well, I'm so excited to finally share that conversation with you. Robin's been a long time dream guest.

Enjoy. Thank you so much everyone for being here.

For those who have my friends for a long time, great to see you all.

For those who may be new to me, to she Pivots, we.

Are a show that was born out of the idea that I needed to redefine success for myself. I spent over a decade in Washington as a political strategist. Had felt like I had professionally hit the height, like had a pretty great career. Then I had three kids in three and a half years, and my entire career was pulled out from under me. I had to listen to

Well, I start a podcast, of course. So we've had to date some incredible interviews.

We were launching our new season next week with vice president Kamala Harris, but tonight we have a very exclusive, very important, very exciting conversation with not just I think we can all agree, the breakout star instructor of Peloton of home fitness in general, but also has a job within the organization as the vice president of fitness Programming. Also two time New York Times bestselling author, now with the third book out today, Strong Baby, Robin Arson.

Robin, come out and join me. This is so fun.

Robin, thank you so much for launching the physical book tour here with us, with this room, with all of your fans.

Can you guys here for Robin Yay.

I'm so misful.

I'm grateful that we can gather in community. And my last event here was a few years ago. Peloton had homecoming events here, so I have really great memories in this space and I'm happy to be back.

I love it so much, Robin, I have to tell you to I feel like my crown's on a little straight to be able to be here in this space with you. So I want to talk about your book here, why we're coming here today starting with this book. Look, I have to ask, I love seeing you here in front of it. What were you gonna say?

Yeah, I was just gonna say talking to the microL.

We got lighting, We have microphones.

We gotta use it all, honeyw we might as well we might as well get some audio forget this as not like cable news where they just like stick a little lab right next to me and my audio goes with me. Thank you, Robin for helping me in all parts of my life, including this interview. Okay, so, Robin, I love this picture so much. Is this you and your daughter? And what does this book mean to you?

Yeah, this is a depiction of Athena and myself and so Addireta Sonda illustrated strong Mama, and we asked her back for a strong baby. I was really proud to partner with her. She's a fellow Latina, she's a young artist, and I just she happened to be plant based like we have a lot of values in common, and so she did a great job really channeling real pictures. Like the imagery in this book. It's a really Athena's bedroom.

That day has coming?

Besides that? Yeah, it really depicts our life.

So I love your progression here in your books, Like I really feel like it really does follow not just your trajectory over the last couple of years, but so many of your writers. You know that you started with a fitness program, a fitness journey, very biographical, then went to Strong Mama and now Strong Baby.

So what has that progression felt like for you?

I mean, it feels like lineage.

It feels like storytelling in its most honest form, where you're kind of passing the microphone a little bit for me, centering the caregiver. One of the very few children's books that feature a pregnant person, certainly on the cover, certainly a pregnant active person and.

For a strong baby.

I wanted to make clear that, you know, even the youngest among us, our athletes are strong, have the capacity for resiliency and language around that. Right, So the mantras and things that I infused in this book.

I didn't babeify it, right.

I wanted to use the real language that I speak to and around my daughter, and you know, and hopefully she absorbs it.

But I love that having a strong pregnant woman, a strong active pregnant woman in its children's book, I think is so important not just for the children to see, but for the parents to see. You know, we chatted about this a little bit backstage, but with my pregnancies, I had been very active beforehand. With my pregnancies, I gained about one hundred pounds. I was very out of shape because that wasn't a piece. The fitness and the diet wasn't a piece that I could keep in managing

So I love that you've.

Created not just the prenatal but the post natal programs. Was that personal for you to create them, or that had been something that you've been thinking.

About for a while. Both.

I mean, it was what I was actually going through at the time, obviously postpartum, and there's.

A real need for it.

And even I mean, what we've put out is just to drop in the bucket of what I hope one day becomes, you know, an even more robust library, because it's really needed. I mean, the medical care community in the US, the standard medical care postpartum is not six weeks. That is nonsense. Postpartum is forever. Postpartum is years. Postpartum is how long you say in building your body to a place of strength and capability. And you're the one

There's no bounce back. There's pushing forward and raising the bar.

For myself because that's my self defined finish line. And I think we need not only literacy and language around those concepts, but we need support in the meta message that self care isn't selfish, but also in the practicalities of like, how the heck do I what is a pelvic floor?

You know what I mean?

Like, there is the basic things that aren't necessarily part of everyday conversation, but for pregnant females it's very important.

So I want to back up to little Robin, a little baby Robin where we started here. You will talk a lot about your mother and your parents and the journey, your professional journey that we will get through all of that.

But I want to back up to little Robin. What was little Robin?

Like the straight a student, surprisingly very shy, Oh, it is surprise shy as a kid arts and craft's kid, very bookish, So part of that is still very much who I am. I love I mean, I'm a voracious reader, but clearly a very public person. So I would say, you know, I was very introverted as a kid, and now I consider myself like an extroverted introvert, like I regained my energy through solitude.

But when do you think that extrovert turned on for you?

I joined the debate team in junior high school and I was like, they passed me one my microphone, and I said, I'm never letting this microphone go. But that was also when I started toying with the idea of going to law school and really getting enchanted with like social science and politics, and so it's probably something related to that.

But as soon as they handed it to you, you were like, I'll take the floor exactly exactly.

Yeah, it bolstered something in me for sure.

Was that the beginning of thinking about going to law school and becoming a lawyer.

Well, my father is an attorney, so I saw him, you know, throughout his career, but that it was I think it was really in junior high when I started thinking about it seriously, and I just made the choice early on, even before applying, you know, to schools to undergrad that law school was in the cards.

Did you think it was because you wanted to emulate your father or was there a particular aspect of law that was drawing you in.

For me, it was the oral advocacy piece. It was the idea or the advocacy piece in general.

It was the idea of being able to take something in a book and then tell a story around that, and so storytelling. Interestingly, storytelling has always been really central to my life, and that was actually the most appealing part of law.

So I ended up becoming a.

Corporate litigator, and I love the ability to wordsmith something, the ability to meet with a client and say, like, what are your facts and what's the finish line, and then just figure out a way to do it.

It's so funny.

I didn't decide that I wanted to go to law school until right before I went, Like, I.

Did not know that I was working up towards it. But it was also the advocacy that drew me to it.

It was that I didn't know how I wanted to make an impact in the world, and law felt like the way to be so broad with it, Like that I could impact so many people's lives, but I didn't think about the storytelling aspect of it. I think that intimidated me actually, Like I think the thing that drew me to law was that it felt black and white, Like it felt straight and clear. But you all saw the nuance very early, so.

Interestingly for such a linear pursuit as law usually is perceived to be. I look at it as painting, like I can see read a legal brief and read like the dreadful you know, tomes that we had in law school. And for me, I'm like picking up colors and pieces and painting a picture. Like for me, it's a very visual experience.

Actually, So you were in law, I mean you didn't just go into law, like you went into the most grueling part of law, like corporate litigation.

Like I remember when I actually was sworn into the bar, the girls.

Behind me were talking about how they were in They were in corporate litigation jobs and they're like, oh, yeah, I seep at the office all the time.

And I was like, I don't think I can be a lawyer.

Yeah, the hustle is real, but it was also I don't know, I was kind of like it was enchanting. For a while, I was in the corporate litigation department of Paul Hastings in New York City. That's where I did my summer associate year, and then I joined them after graduation.

And it taught me how to be a business.

Like I have a lot of tentacles to my LLC and my entrepreneurship, and that is directly related to my ability to think like a lawyer. So they really had to happen sequentially for me to be who I am today.

The hustle is real for Robin.

She's a two times New York Times bestselling author, and in twenty twenty she was named one of the most influential people on Fortune magazines forty under forty list than In twenty twenty one, she became the first ever recipient of Glamour Magazines Daring to Disrupt award, and through it all, she still somehow runs ultra marathons. So you talk a lot in your classes about you will use the word pivot,

Today, like she pivot it out of law. You're gonna love this class.

I was like, guys, I would be exhausted if I listen to everyone of Robin's classes.

We talked about ehivting out.

Of law, but it was actually quite It was one event that began the pivot out of law for you, something that you allude to often but don't talk about in detail often.

Would you mind sharing that with us?

Yeah.

So when I was entering my final year at NYU, I was down in the East Village with girlfriends. I was apparently at a law firm at the time, and I went to a wine bar with my girlfriends and it ended up getting held at gunpoint.

Like a man walked in with a gun.

He had one hundred rounds of artillery, like he had kerosene samurai swords. I mean, it was truly like a horror film. And I ended up becoming the negotiator. It's essentially a pseudo negotiator at twenty years old with NYPD who ended up being called and coming outside.

A number of people were shot.

Our top story this morning, the NYPD is investigating a late night shooting in the East Village. Well coming up, how surviving and on a imaginable and horrifying crime help Robin gain.

Focus and a new purpose.

This is a part of her life that I did not know, and when I read the story, I knew.

I wanted to ask her about it, her.

Inspiring journey and resilient after it was truly like it was, I don't know, it's weird. I've been processing it for a really long time and I'm very comfortable talking about it.

I've written about it publicly.

I processed it through lots of thousands of thousands of miles of running and that I had a choice every day thereafter, right, Like it's really interesting. I think trauma survivors will understand this. Any type of trauma that you kind of have, it kind of sits with you, like it's always like this.

Little bit of a companion.

And instead of trying to get away from that, I just decided to like absorb it enough to then rise above it, Like I don't know.

The catalyst for me was so borytelling.

Actually it was when I became really acutely aware of narrative, my inner monologue and the story that I was telling myself about myself. And I learned later that this is a therapy technique like a talk therapy technique. But I started writing about myself and the third person, and I would literally to get over the fear, because I had fear of.

Even just leaving my apartment and getting on the subway.

So I would write in my journal like Robin gets on the A train at west Ford Street, she goes to school, she comes back, She's safe. Like I had to write about myself and the third person to start to really see myself.

Like living out of this. And then I was like, well, how far can I take this?

So that became like a lot of how I teach and how I express myself. Some might perceive that as like hyperbolic, but like, I truly do believe I'm the biggest, most amazing badass on the planet, and I want everyone else to feel that way about themselves too.

Like why not.

It can be so much more for.

The world when you're filled with that energy, especially when you're doing it from a place of like anchored in community and giving, which.

I hope I am most of the time. And yeah, so that's how that whole thing.

It was a catalyst, and it was a huge inflection point, and it continues to be an inflection point and rising above trauma, I think does.

Become a choice.

It becomes like thousands of subsequent inflection points and choices. And I don't want to drink self pity as poison.

I just don't How did the running start to come into play then? Because you hadn't really been an athlete growing up.

No, not at all.

I started running in law school and I don't know why. I had, like dusty not even running shoes in my closet, and I just decided to like walk jog to campus one day in the suburbs of Philadelphia, went to Villanova Law School, and that's.

Where it started.

It was just like a curiosity that turned into a hate relationship. To be honest, I was like, I hate this, But how could I be.

So bad at something?

Like?

You know, I was like, I was so horrible at this. How could that be? I'm in law school, I'm kicking butt. But then, you know, we always it's good.

It's good to have that beginner's mindset, and I certainly was a beginner, and that's how it started. It was very humble, humble beginnings. I mean, it was truly a few blocks at a time.

Do you think.

That that it was such a physical challenge for you and so different when you were in a setting that you were doing so well. Was that part of the appeal, like to run towards something that that was so different and that scared you a little bit?

Absolutely?

I mean that's when I started to develop in parallel tracks, right, like develop an appetite for discomfort, and like, yeah, just everything about law school was really like terrifying and enthralling.

A lot of crying on my side and a lot of crying.

I'm a school verson. I'm like, give me the syllabus. I love a Staples run like, I'm just like that.

I am a Virgo board in September, honey, and give me school supplies all day.

I'm into all of that.

Yeah, I was definitely into the law school game. But it really was a time clearly I had to run through a whole lot, and that scole was very much cord is all filled as well. So I did need an outlet for many reasons, and at that point in law school I was the only one. I was really doing all that training by myself, and turning that journey as a runner as a solo pursuit allowed me to go on my own path without any other gaze or

I mean, I was truly, truly.

Just like going out, like lacing up and going the purest training I've ever done.

Actually, So in that regard, I think about of it.

Finally, something you've said that I love so much is resilience is a value worth celebrating.

I love that so much.

Was that a piece of it that that you needed to be kind of working on that resilience muscle as well?

Sure, I mean, resiliency is something that lives in all of us, but we need to have opportunities to become resilient.

Like there always needs to be that moment.

I think of kids and the monkey bars, like when you're grasping from one monkey bar to the other, that little.

Moment of tension where you're suspended. I live for that. I've created my whole life based on that little moment, like my entire life.

I want us to get on that bike and roar. The human spirit is so resilient. I have a tattoo on my ribs that says resilient stock.

And my mom.

Told me that growing up.

She told my sister and I that we came from a resilient stock, that we were from the lineage of hundreds of years of fighters and warriors, and I think I was raised by a wolf pack.

Working out is actually my life's work is astonishing, definitely to me and everyone around me.

How did it go from running a couple of blocks to then turn into it sounds like almost a form of therapy for you one percent.

It was moving therapy, There's no question about it. It became.

So I actually saw a flyer at a bank. So this is before like even palm Pilot or like Blackberries, like you had to like sit at a computer to like research something at that point.

So I was at the bank depositing an actual check.

I saw a flyer at the bank for a ten k that was happening the next morning. I did not google how far a ten k was. I just showed up at the Art Museum Steps in Philadelphia and I said, I'm here for the ten k. I registered on site and I nearly died and I crossed that finish shine, and I said, that will never happen again, that will never be that hard again.

So I did some ruderentary training.

And then a half turned into a half marathon, and that half marathon after a breakup, turned into a marathon. So yeah, literally it was like, I ran the half marathon, broke up with my ex boyfriend, and then I was like, yeah, that fall marathon sounds real nice. So I just like literally kept running and it was therapy. It was there was something really magical that was happening. During the runs, it was abysmal, but after the runs, I.

Was like, oh, oh, like this is the there's.

Something heroic about this, Like I feel like a hero when I'm done.

And I thought, I want to live a life that is filled with that, and movement became a real tool for that experience. Movement has changed my life.

Movement has unlocked a wellspring of confidence. It's not an athlete at all, and I think that goes to the power of reinvent the power of curiosity. And I didn't discover movement until much later in life as an adult, when I joined Peloton and started running marathons and ultra marathons, and I.

Look at my So to go from the tool, the process, the movement therapy to actually turning us into a career. You said there wasn't actually kind of one like Jerry maguire moment. It was a progression. But what were those concrete steps that you took.

I've talked previously about setting a calendar appointment for ten minutes a day, and it was in those recurring calendar appointments with myself that I would google, you know, what does an editor at a magazine do? Like, what does just anybody even tangentially related to sports journalism or sports in general. I didn't have illusions that I was going to be like some Olympic athlete or something, So I was like, what do the people around these people do?

And that was how it started. It started really humbly.

But intentionally and consistently. And that's when I realized that little by little can amount to a lot, and that we can unstick ourselves like there is like a stasis that we there's like an inertia that we can sometimes find ourselves in.

Fear is often very paralyzing, and we.

Tell ourselves the story that one small moment isn't going to take us out of that feeling of inertia, and I realized I called myself on my own BS and I just said, try try something, And that trying ended up like planting tons of seats, and just in the mean, I would say I probably sent out literally thousands of emails, like thousands of requests, like thousands of Google.

Searches over the two years. And then finally I took a leave of absence from my law firm.

She left Paul Hastings to start a tumbler called Shut Up and Run, which eventually became the title of her first book. Social media as a means of reporting was just starting to take off, so believing that was good enough, she booked a ticket to London to cover the games.

I slept on my friend's couch for the entirety of the games for three weeks, and I had a cracked iPhone and I just blogged it. And I reached out to athletes, like professional athletes who are now collaborators and friends of mine.

But I was so bold, like I didn't know what I didn't know. So I was just like, Hey, what's up. I love running, you want to talk about it?

And I'm not.

Kidding like that is what I did all through London, and people were trying to talk about like this girl who just rocked up and like red lipstick and lots of gold rings and big hoops and just wanted to talk about running. And I was like, yeah, what's up on, Robin, It's me And I made business.

Cards and everything like I was fully.

Oh my god, these business cards are so embarrassing now, but there were like these tiny little strips of paper with my tumbler on it, and I was fully of walking around London just like. But I left with a job, so I had to quit my law firm job to take this extended leave to go to London.

So I went to London without a job. Left London.

So I was in a Nike store and the then CEO of Nike came up to me and he was like, wow, you have a great style.

You should consider writing about like sports fashion. And I was like, well, funny that you should say that. Here's my business card.

And you can find my tumbler on it.

And I ended up leaving with a job working on the agency side where Nike Women was my client and I was helping run their social media accounts.

So I truly thought I had my dream job.

Six months after that, I realized that the storytelling piece that I was so in love with really needed to be infused with my own movement and my own perspective in order for it to be fulfilling to me. And I had developed a burgeoning audience on social media at the time, so I thought, Okay, like what if we make this even bigger? And you know, I started doing more ultra marathons and I started writing my book, and

But there wasn't one aha home moment. There were thousands.

I mean, it was like a masterclass in social media and like how a big brand navigates that. So that was really that was a I mean, I definitely walked away with a pretty intense toolkit. So I'm grateful for that experience, and I think that's why I had that experience. But you also have to sometimes have things in life that are definite knows, so you even know what the yes is supposed to look like. And then I also I was running with a crew called Bridge Runners. There's

And obviously that's an amazing gift.

But I also had rent and I realized, like with my lawyer background, I was like, oh, so if I charged this much billable hourly rate as a lawyer, and I know that the brands have money for.

Campaigns, They're going to start paying me.

And so that was another pivot, another way I had to bet on myself.

I was obviously told no many times, but I.

Held out for the right yesis and that really provided an important bridge to my ability to become a business.

Do you think that leaving to become to like kind of bet on yourself. Leaving that was maybe harder or less hard, I guess than leaving law altogether.

Definitely harder because in this at this time, I was cobbling together. You know, after I left the agency, I was like teaching spin, writing my book, coaching runners. It was just very much like a Hodgepodge entrepreneur life that was not glamorous, and I had no idea what I was doing and I was completely making it up.

I feel like that's a conversation that we have a lot with women who are thinking about pivoting either maybe into a different career, into a different kind or out

Yeah, I actually did what I call a four part audit.

I call it that now, and like as I was developing my masterclass on mental toughness, I finessed that a little bit more.

But the audit was really like a brass tax.

It was like financial, you know, like what dollars and cents do I need to make all this work? It was like a spiritual existential like who am I?

What am I doing? You know, post trauma, just twenty mid twenties, Like what are we doing here?

Then physical it's like how am I feeling in my physical body? Like what is the energy as currency that I'm going to give to the world. And of course this was a very athletic pursuit. My business was athletics, so that was important. The fourth piece was kind of what kind of community do I want to build in the world, Like what's the value system that I want to be the connective.

Tissue and that kind of relates to the other things too.

I guess that's a little bit related to the existential piece, but that also needed to answer how I wanted to feel when I arrived at this perceived destination. So that piece was the more the most compelling question, because I think when we're in between, when.

We're feeling that friction and that feeling of.

Like I need to get unstuck, we might focus on a title or somebody else's definition of an achievement or business that has certain accolades, but we don't often a visualize ourselves in that thing, Like I would visualize myself honestly in spaces like this and think about the contours of what that would feel like and look like. But I don't think we always ask ourselves the question of, like, how do I want that to feel like?

When I would think about okay in this new world.

Of whatever this is for you? When your head hits the pillow at night, what do you feel.

About your day?

Like?

Those are the things, the qualitative things that I would ask myself write in journal journals and vision boards were huge for me. So those are the kind of reflexive questions that I was asking myself at the time and still do.

So why Peloton and how Peloton?

So I did a vision board and in the business quadrant was disruptive technology, and I didn't even know what that meant.

I had like a picture of like an Apple computer. I didn't know what that meant. I knew that what I.

Was I was teaching spin at a local spin studio in Union Square. I thought this has to scale, Like, there's like four people in here tonight and I'm.

Gonna give you my all, honey, and we're gonna slay it.

But I was like this, this, this, there's kind of even more here. And then I read an article about Pelton. It was a blurb in a technology magazine and really small bird.

But I don't think I would have noticed.

I don't think my interest would have peaked if it hadn't been for the vision board. And then so I reached out like their info at email. It was Pelton's cycle at the time, and I was in that same week to meet like the fifteen people that worked.

At the company.

Wait, so who answers the info?

I think it was like the community lead.

Yeah, she asked me in the audition, and our former CEO was there, and it was like the whole thing.

Do you remember exactly what you wrote in that email? Like did you say Hello, I'm Robin and I'm going to blow your mind?

Now I think I specific I probably have that email somewhere, Gosha, I have to find it.

Actually might have been my MSN email. Oh I got this embarrassing. So yeah, I remember writing something to the effect.

I do a lot of drafts in my notes of important notes and memos and emails and things, and I did have like some text of the copy that said, like our business objectives were aligned. And then I wanted to storytell and be a fire starter for people around the world. And I really saw the global scale, like the Art New York City studio wasn't even open.

Yet, and I was like, yeah, we're about to run this shit. Okay, there's nothing in the world like what we do at Peloton.

Peloton is the greatest thing ever to exist.

The boy.

It's sold by the company Peloton, which reportedly now has more customers than even the sping Giant Soul Cycle.

What would you say is Peloton's biggest competitive advantage today?

The brand is golden and the user experiences platinum and always has been many and then right before you started at Peloton, so now you've positioned yourself as physical well being health as being core to your brand.

You had a bit of a health surprise.

Yes, Actually, a few weeks before I started at Peloton, I had already accepted the job.

I had already planned a trip.

To visit my sister, who was living in India at the time, and I came back feeling super lethargic and fatigued, and just I didn't understand what I was feeling, super run down, and I took a blood test and I found out that I am a type one diabetic and my pangrease doesn't produce insulin.

So at some point in those few I had.

Stopped producing insulent or producing very little insolent and autoimmune condition that could not have been predicted. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm on the precipice of this amazing job that is physical, it's in front of cameras.

I've never done this before.

And I also had an ultra marathon a few weeks after my diagnosis, and I was like, I'm just gonna have to figure this out. And the doctors who I was seeing at the time were extremely They had I think they had very good intentions, but they were questioning like who was this very quizically, who is this unicorn? And why does she think that she's going to run an ultra marathon and get on TV tomorrow?

And I thought, okay, well I'm just going to show you.

So I had to educate myself and I had to find the right partners in my care and I just I had really had to treat myself, honestly, like a science experiment because there weren't many people doing what I wanted to do physically.

And I did. I did figure it out, thankfully, but it was hard.

I can only imagine feeling like you've left this career, you've bet on yourself and it's all centered around and being physically able. Yeah, was that a moment that you were actually questioning the path that you went down?

Not really, No, I didn't question it at all. I did question.

I mean, there was so much unknown, right, so when you're when you are, I have.

To think like a pancreas.

So the average type one diabetic makes an additional two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty decisions a day related to my livelihood, related to my ability to live and so when you add the complicated elements of fueling and physical activity, blood sugar going too high, too low, that's a lot. And I just decided, like, this is just going to be part of my business now, like now you are the business manager of your pancreas, like I just had to like really just be very practical about it.

And I mean it was really it was. It was certainly a lot.

It was a steep learning curve, and I think it always is even now, even though I have amazing control. The reason I didn't question it is because I had so much body awareness and so much understanding already of how food, how my body reacts to food, how I was already able to think critically around those leavers that would be relevant.

To my care.

So now I just needed to kind of add a layer of technology and education onto it.

And once I did that, it was all it was okay.

In your classes, you have a lot of mantras that you repeat that you come back to.

Let's polish our crowds, baby, so let's go ahead and bring the love and.

Baby, and you share quite a bit about yourself, which I don't know it was necessarily the model at the time. How did you decide to be so vulnerable in opening up so much of yourself to your classes and how did you decide what gets shared and what stays for you?

Oh yeah, well the second part of your question, I guess the filter. I think that's something that we all kind of wrestle with, you know, to the extent that we all have public lives on social media platforms or in business spaces or with coworkers whoever.

But you know, part of it, of the of the sharing, and then just being myself was.

Honestly like I didn't survive to shrink, like I didn't survive and really fight for my own confidence and power after being held at gunpoint to be anybody but myself period. And then when I add to it, I'm really proud to be a Latina.

My mother is a Cuban refugee.

My father is like the real life goodwill hunting, Like he was a janitor at Acunity school that wasn't accepted and then just started auditing classes and showed up for tests and the teachers like, you're not a student here. He's like not yet. It was wild, Like my dad's story is wild too. So anyway, growing up with those stories. It emboldens me in a way that how dare I not?

Find your people.

So I said, Okay, I'm just going to be a beacon and we're going to find each other. And if it's not for you, just keep it moving.

I love that you Know you mentioned your parents here.

Do you find that now that as you've become a parent, you find that there's things in your parents and you're like, well, I never thought I would do that. And then okay, now my mother, like do you find that? Do you find little things like that?

Well, anytime I listened to like hours on end of NPR, I realize that I.

Have become my mother. I used to bemoan the hours of NPR in the.

Car growing up, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm literally her. But yes, I have moments like that all the time. I had no preconceived notions of what kind of parent I would be. I just really try to be in any chapter of my life and just bring my value system.

And if I don't know it. I'll figure it out.

It's just my game plan for everything. But of course you understand. I think when you become a parent, you understand the breadth of the humanity of just raising humans, and you have much more compassion for you know, the limitations that our own parents had.

I mean the limitations when I look at the amount of things that you do, like not just teaching classes on your own, having a corporate role within the organization at Peloton, building a family, and then also your business is okay, we've got the new web three platform, Swagger Society, your third book. I really marvel at the amount of things that you have done. Where do you find the energy for all of these things? Where do you find the time for all of these things?

Well, it's all about choices, right. Time is a currency.

So I'm really very prudent and intentional with how I spend my time.

But honestly, the energy piece is it's back to basics.

It's it's not a sexy answer, Like I get asked this question a lot, and it's like you're.

Feeling around down.

Okay, have you had a glass of water and consumed a vegetable in the last twenty.

Four hours, like.

Really, you know, I mean obviously like get yourself checked out, your blood work, da.

Da da.

But like we know what to do. It's just when we're in the throes of life that we don't do it right. And we know it.

We know it.

How many podcasts, how many books, even if they're my books? Are you going to read before you're like, yeah, I know what to do, you know. So I take care.

Of those things, like I control the controllables. I feel pretty impeccably, you know. For me, I sleep minimum nine hours a night. Like once Athena was sleeping through the night.

It's like goodbye. I sleep nine hours period.

And Drew and I my husband, I really really create care that our home is like high vibration, Like there's a single person that has passed that threshold into our home that isn't of that same energy system.

We take it really seriously. So I keep my circle small. You know.

My social interactions are high vibration, really intentional events, and that fuels me and.

Fuels my spirit. And I revisit that audit.

That I did as a lawyer often and I think, like I'm in X season of my life. Now, what pieces kind of need to bend so I don't break.

And I'm also I ask for what I need. I don't martyr myself to any area of my life. I don't bemoan. Oh I'm this person. Oh I'm an executive. Oh I'm a mom.

There are elements of each of those roles that can be really hard. But I have to have critical conversations with myself and the stakeholders in my life and say, like, this doesn't work with me.

This does. And when I show up with the.

Right energy and the right intention, people make money, We get to finish lines, and we achieve what we set out to achieve. But that's not going to be done if I dilute myself and I learn that.

You know, I've made mistakes along the way, and I've learned.

That, So saying no must be a piece of that.

It's my favorite sentence. No, It's a complete sentence.

I love it, and I absolutely think that we should become more comfortable saying no because the lukewarm yes is as I think what, I think, it can really erode community.

Actually, I think it can really erode businesses.

The lukewarm yes, the yes that said without a true understanding of purpose, and obligation.

I think so many people come to your classes and the conversation that you bring for a support for them, like a cheerleader for them. So, when you're looking to evaluate a new opportunity or feeling like you're not so sure how to enter a new space, what does that personal board of directors look like for you?

Oh, my gosh, there's a lot, you know.

Thankfully, I have now befriended like some folks who you know in previous iterations of Robin, you know, I just read about them in books or listen to their podcasts, you know, so I can lean on some pretty amazing titans of industry now that I'm very fortunate to call friends. And I actually my husband and my family are like my og wolf pack. And even if they might not understand like all the contours of a business decision or what I'm actually experiencing in the day to day, they

For me to make the decision on my own.

Okay, So with all of these businesses, all of the adventures, all of the ventures, I feel like the question is, why are you going to stop pivoting.

Literally never, I will always pivot. I mean, it's such a beautiful I'm so glad that this is the pod because we have such a capacity to iterate, and I think that that's so freeing when we give ourselves permission to self define a finish line. I find that really liberating because it means that you can always course correct. And the pivot for me is that a full conversation that we're able to have with ourselves to ask like is this as good as it guests?

But if it could be better?

And why not me?

And that requires I think that our greatest moments lie in that little bit of tension, that little bit of friction, Like there are moments of like that little bit of friction where we're like back to that monkey Bar's analogy, like should I and.

I live for that?

Okay, so I have to ask you my favorite question to wrap up this conversation, which I.

Don't want to wrap up.

I want to talk to you all night, and I think this audience wants to hear from you all night, but I do, unfortunately, have to have to end. So I'm going to ask you my favorite question, which is what is one thing in your life that at the time you saw it as just a total low, and now in retrospect you see that it launched you into greatness.

Yeah. So I believe failure is feedback.

During that time period when I was I had left the age and see, but before I joined Peloton, I was like, Okay, I'm going to become a leggings an athletic word designer. And I invested money, I hired, I had fab I mean, I was going. I was like gonna go to Asia. I mean, it was like a whole thing. It was like, I'm fresh designer now, and.

If anybody's a fashion is that's not how it worked. You just that doesn't that does this.

Not how it works?

So I poured a lot of money into this, and then I just ended up with reams of fabrics that in my East Village apartment that never got made apart.

From like two ill fitting samples. And I realized this isn't it. I had to go.

I knew in that moment I had to like go full force into this. This wasn't a side hustle. I realized that really quickly. I was like, there's no side hustle into this. You have zero background in this. It would have been achievable, but it would have been my whole life. I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you in that capacity, in this capacity, So that felt like

Had to sit with it.

Yeah, And speaking of pivots, that taught me that pivoting is different than failing, Like intentionally saying I'm course correcting this no longer works isn't the same as never reaching the finish line. Like in racing, there's something called DNF, like you do not finish, and it could happen for any number of reasons, injury being a primary one of them. They're very valid reasons for dnfing. But in my mind

That was the right call.

So it's a good example to me that some pivots, she needs to be intentional and well before the finish line.

I love that so much. The perfect note for us to end on. Thank you Robin so much for joining us. It's been so incredible, so incredible to have you. Robin is due with baby number two any day now, and we're so excited for her. Since our interview, Robin has continued to leave Peloton in her roles as VP of Fitness Programming and as head instructor. You can catch her

Be sure to.

Follow us on Instagram at She Pivots the podcast and leave a rating and comment if you enjoyed this episode to help others learn about it. A special thank you to our partner Marie Claire and the team that made this episode possible.

Talk to you next week.

She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced by Emily Eda Voloshik, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock and research and planning from Christine Dickinson and Hannah Cousins.

I endorse she Pivots.