NYLP: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod. The New York Press Club award winning podcast, highlighting new start-ups, businesses and openings in New York City area. I’m Hal Coopersmith and in this episode we’re going into the online fitness world. We speak to Ashley Mills and Mark Mullet, the founders of obé, which stands for Our Body Electric. It’s a fantastic workout delivered over an app. Here’s Mark.
Mark: There’s something so special about fitness talent because they make you look better, they make you feel better, they inspire you, they motivate you. And to be able to bring that caliber of talent into your home every day is an incredible mission for us.
NYLP: There is a lot to obé’s success which includes its community, the workout and its look and feel. Here’s Ashley.
Ashley: So we’ve chosen colors and lighting schematics that really wake people up and get people excited and infuse energy because we’re asking them to really challenge themselves. And so we want to make sure that that experience being there helps and aids in that process.
NYLP: There is a lot to discuss in this episode, from why Mark and Ashley left the talent agency world to start their company, what it’s like to be an online fitness platform and a whole lot more. If you want to try out obé, we have a special discount code at the end of the episode. It’s not an affiliate code so all the savings go to you. Let’s find out about obé and go to the interview. Stepping onto Launch Pod we have Ashley Mills and Mark Mullet, the co-founders of obé, the in-home, online fitness class that all the kids, all the cool kids are doing.
Mark: I’ll take it.
NYLP: You’ll take it?
Ashley: Yes.
Mark: All of our members are cool kids.
NYLP: Welcome.
Mark: Thanks for having us.
Ashley: Thank you. We’re happy to be here.
NYLP: So what is obé?
Mark: Obé is exactly what you just said Hal. We are a streaming fitness platform and community that broadcast live and on demand classes to people across the country every single day. So, whether you’re working out with us live in the morning, maybe your lunch break at work, maybe at night after the kids are in bed, we’re offering you a really robust, always refreshed variety of exercise classes, only 28 minutes each that you can do at home.
NYLP: So why online streaming home fitness?
Ashley: Mark and I both grew up with moms who did lots of workout videos in the 80’s, and they were always smiling and having fun. They worked out at home and it was really convenient. Obviously, that was many years ago at this point. As people who were sort of big fans of the boutique fitness economy and were spending a lot of money in the boutique fitness economy, we just saw a major opportunity to democratize that experience and bring it to the at home consumer. Mark’s from upstate New York, I’m from Ohio originally and it was surprising to go home and to try and find studios and they didn’t have the kind of studios or the quality of studios, the quality of instructor that we do here in New York or in Los Angeles. And so, really, that was sort of the goal, like how do we create this kind of content that’s super compelling and bring it to an at home audience. Mark and I both come from the entertainment business. We were work husband and wife at a big agency. We spent a lot of time building different platforms and creating really incredible content and working with producers to do that. And so, it was just very clear to us that the genre could be reinvented and that there was so much to do with fitness content and a way to bring it to an at home audience that was going to feel super compelling and something that they could connect with and really build community. And that’s why the shout outs are super important in every class that we do. So people, you know, they feel very connected to the instructor and they feel like obé is a big part of their life. And I think that’s why we found stickiness so early.
NYLP: So who is the target audience?
Mark: Well, the target audience really is anybody who wants to work out and have a great time while they’re doing it from home or wherever they are on the go. But, our audience is primarily female of all ages. A lot of moms, we love our moms. We realize that raising kids can be hectic, especially if you’re also balancing a job and obé is great for that. Working out quickly in the morning, going to work or sending the kids off to school, it’s been a great way for people to again, connect with like-minded people, get their workout in and also find efficiency in their lives.
NYLP: All ages, which is great. I’m surprised to hear that though because it seems like it has such a millennial target and feel.
Ashley: Yeah, what we like to say, it’s sort of the millennial mindset. So it’s this person who wants it all. They want the body, they want the job, they want the man, they want the woman. They want all of these things in their lives. And so, our core audience is this sort of female, a lot of again, like Mark said, a lot of moms. But I don’t think at the end of the day we’re going after them really, really specifically. It really is this mindset, it’s someone who wants all of those things and we want to help them get there.
NYLP: And you mentioned that you want to democratize boutique fitness classes. Is it supposed to be urban or suburban? Where exactly geographically are you looking for?
Ashley: Yeah, when I say that, I mean that we want to democratize the experience of being in a class. So, it’s very different obviously being in a brick and mortar class with other people than being at home. We love the brick and mortar business. That’s certainly not a business we want to be in but we have an incredible amount of respect for it. I think for us, we’re really looking to bring the kind of, the way that you feel in a class and bring that to an at home audience, which is where the market I think is really underserved.
Mark: And also that caliber of talent, right? Ashley and I come from the talent agency business, working with talent across the TV dial. There’s something so special about fitness talent because they make you look better, they make you feel better, they inspire you, they motivate you. To be able to bring that caliber of talent into your home every day is an incredible mission for us. In New York City, you’ll go to a boutique fitness class and afterwards you’ll see everybody clamor around the instructor, they have this great energy. We want to create that same feeling for people, whether they’re in Hawaii or in Texas or in Oklahoma City, or wherever. You don’t have to just be on Park Avenue to have that feeling and that experience.
NYLP: So you brought up a great point. Who are the instructors and how are you getting them?
Ashley: We cast them like we would have cast shows in our sort of previous life. And so we were looking for people with a strong point of view, people who were technicians of the body who were real motivators who had an ability to create a playlist and we sort of were musically driven. All of our classes be driven and so that’s obviously a super important component. And people who believe in what we’re doing, who really, you know, who are in fitness for the right reasons, who are really interested in inspiring people and helping them grow.
Mark: Our talent really love to connect with our members. So that goes back to the whole community piece. So we live in social media driven age obviously and that’s a huge part of who we are and how we reach people. But, the power of the direct message. So our talent are constantly speaking with our members. Our members are saying hey, great class, great song. I’m so sore, I’m so this, I’m so that. And they’re liking each other’s pictures and they’re really getting to know each other. So, it’s this non in person in person relationship. They know each other. It’s not totally virtual, but they’re just not in the same room and we really love that.
NYLP: You brought this up. But the top talent in New York and fitness is here and they’re hard to get. You can identify talent and you figured out that beat instructors and so forth. But, what was that conversation like to say, hey, you should come to our online fitness platform?
Mark: We cast talent that we had been working out with for years. People who had been referred to us, people that we have been just wanting to get to know. We’ve told talent over the year that we want to be a delicious side dish on their plate. We know they have other jobs, we know that they teach at a studio, that they maybe do personal training, they do training at someone’s house. We want to be a part of that equation. So, I think that that’s great for them too because they can keep their jobs in New York City and obé is a big part of it and their reach is far greater. They’re reaching people all over the country and beyond really while also maintaining the other things that they’re doing. And I think that Ashley and I know how to be good partners like that and our talent appreciate that.
NYLP: So what was that conversation like? We love working out with you, you play great playlist, come to our online fitness startup?
Ashley: Yeah, I think it was a lot of the talent that’s in New York, you know, they’re doing lots of other things. They’re modeling, they’re dancing, they’re teaching boutique fitness, they’re doing all kinds of stuff. And I think anybody who wants to build a brand and who wants to, a lot of these folks are entertainers, like they want to be on camera, they want to have, they want to be able to perform all the time and that’s what they get to do with us, which is a really amazing thing if you think about it. We broadcast seven days a week, 14 classes a day, that’s an incredible opportunity if you are on-camera talent and you want to be performing for an audience, there’s really nothing better because they get a ton of airtime.
Mark: We have talent who make our members think, make them cry, make them laugh, make them chuckle at a pop cultural reference from The Bachelor the night before. It’s sort of everything on the spectrum of feelings. That’s to us what a great workout experience should also incite. It should incite joy, it shouldn’t incite thought. And it might even bring up some feelings that are a little difficult to process but help you process them. Our talent are great at doing that and connecting with our members in that way.
NYLP: I don’t know the business exactly but I think in boutique fitness you’re paid by a portion of the room of the number of people who attend, and there’s a maximum capacity in a room. Are you paying your instructors based off of how many people are signing in and saying there’s more potential here?
Ashley: Yeah, it’s a little bit of a different model. It’s more of like an episodic rate.
Mark: What we will say and from the beginning, this is really important, Ashley and I, we pay well. We looked at the fitness landscape, especially in New York and saw who paid really well and who could pay a little bit better to their talent and we made sure that when we were budgeting out this process as a start-up, we wanted to make sure that we were paying our talent as best and as well as we could and we’re proud of that.
NYLP: Who paid well?
Mark: You know, I don’t kiss and tell but I think we paid pretty well. We’re really proud of it. We very purposely call our talent, talent. We purposely refer to them as our partners. We meet with them regularly, we’ve gotten to know them and they bring a lot of energy to our office. It’s really inspiring.
NYLP: So how much money did it take to start up because you probably need a smaller space for your online studio but you need to build out a nice web application and pay your talent.
Ashley: We’re not going to talk about the exact numbers in terms of what we raise.
NYLP: Good, I wouldn’t want to hear it all.
Ashley: I will say that we were very lean and we found effective ways of getting what we needed done in the beginning to sort of like test the model and we’ll continue to grow and add on to everything that we’re doing. So, we could have spent a ton of money building what we’re building and I think we didn’t which is a good thing. It’s going really well.
Mark: We budgeted what the build and the years to come would look like and knock the wood here on your desk. We’ve done pretty well by that. And as Ashley just said, we’re scrappy. So we’re decisive in how we spend and we’re judicious in how we spend and we do not overspend. We pay for great talent and we pay for great production, the most incredible production team and all that good stuff. But we are really judicious about every penny that goes out of that business.
NYLP: And when did you start up?
Ashley: So we got our space in November, yeah, November, in DUMBO right over the Brooklyn Bridge. And we launched our beta in January. We launched the paid service in March and here we are in July.
Mark: We had been working for a while. There’s a lot that goes into it, obviously, aside from fundraising, but just planning and really creating that vision prior to moving into the space. Moving into DUMBO was onto itself a really cool experience for us because we had looked all over Manhattan. We were on a budget obviously as a start-up, and we had certain restrictions, we needed certain kind of height and soundproofing and all that good stuff that goes into production. We looked at a lot of undesirable spaces in Manhattan, like signs that said, beware of rats. I can’t even tell you. One broker said, hey, have you thought about DUMBO. I think I probably rolled my eyes. We went to DUMBO the next day and fell in love.
Ashley: Well, because you didn’t know anything about it.
Mark: I hadn’t been. I hadn’t been. By the way, now I think I discovered DUMBO. Equinox, Juice Press.
Ashley: It’s like the coolest place of all time.
Mark: Every single great brand especially in the wellness category and hospitality categories are they are and it’s just a spectacular location. But Ashley still teases me because in the beginning I used to tell everyone, oh, we’re in DUMBO, Brooklyn, DUMBO, Brooklyn. And it’s like, say DUMBO or say Brooklyn. Don’t say DUMBO, Brooklyn. So I will very concisely say now we are in DUMBO.
NYLP: And you are true Manhattanite based off of that.
Mark: We both live on the Upper East Side and we commute to work very early in the morning. It feels like we’re running a news network in that way. But yeah, I kind of feel like an honorary Brooklynite, Dumbite, I don’t know. We love DUMBO. That’s the message.
Ashley: You know what’s funny, it’s like when we originally created the business and we were creating all of these like logins for our beta users, I remember making every single login Dumbo123 and I sent it to so many people. My mom was like, why are you calling me dumb?
Mark: Yeah, real offensive.
NYLP: And changed all the passwords.
Mark: And changed all the passwords.
Ashley: Those passwords are long gone.
Mark: So as not to offend our members.
NYLP: So you started in January. It’s the two of you as co-founders. How many full time employees do you have aside from your talent which are I imagine on part time?
Ashley: Yes, our employees are part time. There are 16 instructors and talent that are sort of with us all the time. We have a really great production team. So there’s, we’re seven days a week so obviously everyone can’t work seven days a week. So there’s 11 total in terms of the production team and they sort of switch off days. And then there’s Mark and I and we have three other sort of full time employees who are with us all the time doing everything. We’re all doing everything. It’s all hands on deck.
Mark: But the office is really cool because it’s bustling at a really early hour of the day. That music gets pumping at about [5:45] A.M. There are people in and out and costume changes and people shouting directions in different microphones. And it’s just, it’s a really cool vibe. And when production wraps at around [2:00] or [3:00] P.M depending on the day, a whole new series of meetings start. The laundry, the wardrobe is getting changed out. Food and whatnot for the next day is being brought in. There’s a vibrance to the office that’s truly unparalleled in my opinion.
NYLP: It’s more than just a fitness studio I mean. I imagine you guys also have to do some actual work. Is it hard to do beats pumping and all that?
Ashley: Less so for Mark.
Mark: There are two interesting points there. One, along the way you learn so many things about you’re messaging your offering to your members or prospective members. We kind of realized that it wasn’t clear necessarily that we were digital only. About a month after we launched, we were still getting questions like oh, I don’t live in New York, I can’t come. It’s like no, no, no, we actually are not in the brick and mortar business and don’t intend to be and you can take a class even if you live across the street. You can take it at your house but not at the studio. So the studio itself is a true production studio. Huge studio control room, separate kitchen, separate sort of meeting conference area, separate sort of retail and fulfillment area and then our offices. The funny part about the sound is, I mean, Ash, take it away on the sound.
Ashley: So it’s loud.
NYLP: Ashley can’t work, Mark.
Ashley: I can, I can actually.
Mark: You also don’t like a lot of sounds in general.
Ashley: I have like weird, weird things. Like Mark eats a lot and chewing drives me nuts. He eats like chicken like five times a day.
Mark: All day.
Ashley: We’ll have like people in doing odd thing. I don’t know. It’s called something, I can’t remember.
Mark: Misophonia or something like that.
Ashley: I don’t know if I actually have it, but I might as well. I certainly have all the symptoms, like it’s chewing gum. I don’t know, it’s just like weird noises really get to me or anything repetitive. Anyway, so, the studio is super loud. Do you know there’s a lot of people in and out and sometimes I like have to put on headphones. I actually have a second desk that I sit at sometimes so I can’t see anything and I can put on headphones and just work because it’s hard to work when you have that many people in and out of your office.
Mark: It’s a funny story but it’s a good point because it’s like, you know, at a start-up, it’s not necessarily individual offices or conference room galore. You have to move around a little bit. Our setup is really fantastic. But if you have trouble concentrating, you got to make it work for you. Now we did soundproof our studio, which is great. When all the doors are shut and all that, it’s pretty quiet in the office, but there’s definitely a lot going on every day and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ashley: Yeah, it’s awesome.
NYLP: And is that an issue for the other employees, the sound?
Ashley: I don’t think so. I think I’m just the weird one.
Mark: And we’re teasing you because you, Ashley and I will alternate and sort of what do work at our desk, pop in the studio and see what’s, making sure everything’s working right, come back out and take shifts in that way. The people who work with us, a lot of them came to us as members, as beta users, which we absolutely love. So, for many of our full time employees, that sound and that vibrance is exactly what they’re there for and what they crave and that is very exciting to us.
NYLP: And we haven’t talked about the experience of an obé class. What is that like? Because it’s a whole thing from the background, lighting.
Ashley: This is exciting to talk about. So all the classes, like we said, were 28 minutes, which is the sort of preferred amount of time to be working out at home before the kids are bothering you, before you get distracted, like want to do laundry or something else. That’s sort of the reasoning for the time and you can get a really great effective workout in 28 minutes, which is something that we really focus on from a programming perspective, making sure that all of the workouts are really effective. In terms of the experience of taking a class, so we have this theme song that plays in between all of our classes. So there’s a, we book all the classes on the half hour and so we have like a two minute sort of buffer where there’s, I’m sure you’ve heard it, the music, the background music, but it says our name, it’s very, very cool. So that happens. The set is white. White is supposed to, in Chinese medicine, open up the lungs. There’s all these like sort of other meanings and we think it’s really cool. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s very, very cool. In terms of the lighting, we were really inspired by this artist James Turrell who does these like beautiful lightscapes. They’re meant to help you kind of like really get into the experience visually, which is a really important sense when you’re thinking about fitness, which, again, hasn’t sort of really been explored, I don’t think in any material way. And so we’ve chosen colors and lighting schematics that really wake people up and get people excited and infuse energy because we’re asking them to really challenge themselves. And so, we want to make sure that that experience being there helps and aids in that process. So one of the other things we have, one of the roles of our production crew is sort of head of vibe. So she does all the lights and she does the music. And so when there’s a big beat drop, she’ll pulse the lights and she’ll do different things to just sort of get people excited. The crew knows when the instructor’s working really hard and when people are at home working really hard. And so we’re constantly anticipating the experience that they’re having so that from a production perspective and a music perspective and all of that, we’re sort of there to meet them.
Mark: The set itself was really important to us because, let me backtrack. Sometimes Ashley and I will go listen to a panel or a podcast or read an article. It seems like there’s a lot of people who feel they’ve invented this idea of working out at home. Ashley and I take no credit of inventing working out at home. We grew up in the 80’s watching our moms work out at home and people exercising at home since Jack LaLanne, I’m sure before that as well.
NYLP: Everything old is new again.
Mark: Everything old is new again. But what we can definitively say is we are looking to and are reinventing the way people work out at home. Reinventing. And as part of that reinvention, we knew that the visual itself, the visual part of the experience needed change. We didn’t want a basic studio with hardwood floors and a stack of medicine balls and a ballet barre and a mirror, like every other fitness video from the 90’s or early 2000’s or now. We wanted something that felt good, that felt good to wake up with, that felt like it was always changing. And so as Ashley had mentioned, James Turrell was an inspiration, Dan Flavin another light artist.
NYLP: Modern art.
Mark: We like modern art. There’s a little bit of Jane Fonda in there, there’s a little bit of Drake “Hotline Bling” in there. The reason I mention all these things is because people will reach out to us and say, hey, that reminds me of the “Hotline Bling” video. Hey, that reminds me of how I used to work out with Jane Fonda. No matter what the that reminds me is, we love every bit of it because whatever it’s inspiring you to think about or nostalgia or making you feel good, it means we’re also doing our job. We want people to feel like they’re in their own music video in their living room, in their hotel, in their office, wherever they are. And so, that kind of takes away from the drudgery of exercise especially if it’s early in the morning.
NYLP: And you’re saying you’re getting a lot of that reminds me. When you’re coming up with all these inspirations, how did you think about that? Were you looking around? What was the process like of just coming up with this studio?
Ashley: I think for us it’s like what we were passionate about and excited about. We wanted to create a product that we wanted to consume. So Mark used to travel all the time for work and so did I. I also had a baby and I was out on maternity leave and I couldn’t go to classes anymore. I didn’t have the time or flexibility. And so I was finding a hard time finding something that really spoke to me. I think when we both had this sort of shared experience, which is one of the sort of I guess foundational pain points that we both had and why we came up with obé, we wanted to create something that we wanted to consume. We wanted to have this like phenomenal experience we could have from home that felt transformative, that felt really cool, that got us connected to ourselves. And so that really is where obé was born. It wasn’t like, we weren’t trying to fit into a mold or anything like that. It was sort of what inspires us, what captivates us and that’s what it was.
Mark: Back to my point from earlier about how exercising on your own can feel a little isolating. If you’re traveling and let’s say you’ve got meetings and you’re up, time zone’s off and there’s a little hotel gym and there’s no one in it and there’s like a weird little bike and weird little treadmill and couple weights. It’s kind of like what do I do? Should I even bother? That’s an isolating feeling. Or even if you’re on vacation, you have a routine. How am I getting my workout in? We wanted to make sure that we were taking that feeling away from the exercise experience so that you were going into something comfortable, something that felt good, that felt inspiring and that felt warm and upbeat. I think that the set itself really reflects that. And you see that throughout our brand in general. We like color, we like happy, we like positivity, we like upbeat. Our members will write into us and we speak with a lot of our members on the phone to or direct message saying the hour or the half hour they spend with us is all positive. Whatever they have going on at work or with their family or whatever else is on their mind, that time for themselves is positive, and that is really, really important to us.
NYLP: So you had all these inspirations, you had this idea of what you wanted obé to become. You’re sitting at the talent agent’s office. How did you decide we’re going to jump off and start this?
Mark: That was an interesting and by the way, difficult process. Kind of happened in phases. Leaving a job that you love is not easy, right? It comes with some decision making. It was definitely an incredible decision for both of us. We value and cherish those years in the talent agency. We cherish the colleagues that we had, our friends still, our clients, the learning experiences, all of that. And we actually look at what we do at obé as an extension of that. We were in the content business, we were in the talent business, and guess what, today we are in the content business, we are in the talent business, we are here to reach people and help them transform their lives. That’s exactly what television does and that’s what we did for many, many years. So, this feels like an extension of what we’ve been groomed to do.
NYLP: But you were identifying talent and you had this idea. What were the steps like? You were talking to each other, what was that conversation like?
Mark: Ashley left first. I left after. I waited, I had to wrap a couple of things up and I waited. I wanted to make sure that, I like to give things my all. So when I was at CAA I was giving that my all and my clients and my colleagues my all. The minute that that was finished, obé became my all and that was really important to me. That was a learning experience too.
NYLP: What was the genesis of the conversation? You’re work husband and wife as you mentioned and you say, hey, we should do this, we see this market opportunity.
Ashley: Yeah, listen, it was kind of, it was something that was like evolving and changing. We didn’t know that it was going to be this sort of when we were talking about it. Like there were parts of it that have sort of carried on but it wasn’t like this super linear way of thinking about a project.
Mark: That’s a great way to put it. It wasn’t linear. But I will say we’re going on a year. Last August, we really pulled the trigger and said, okay, go time, let’s do this. No one’s getting any younger and the people we are trying to reach, the world that we’re trying to reach needs this, we need this. So, let’s go.
Ashley: So then in terms of the next phase, it was like how, okay, so we know that we want this to be a brand and we have a sense of what we want it to look like. We didn’t have any money obviously yet. So, we had to build a lot of stuff. We had to test things and we had to start having conversations with people. That takes a lot of time. It hasn’t been, like I said, it hasn’t been like a straight line in terms of how we’ve gotten here. I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to build. That year was a really tough year. You know, it’s trying. It’s like anything. It’s like you make this big decision, you make this big leap and then you doubt yourself and you try not to, but you know what I mean, it’s just, it’s like human nature. And so you have to like really be a master of your own mind in those scenarios and like figure out how to stay really focused and to build the thing that you set out to.
Mark: We had each other for that too. The beauty of being co-founders who have worked with each other for many years prior to this in a different capacity and also have a strong and authentic friendship beyond that is you can be honest with each other and you can say, oh man, last night, like I got up at three in the morning and did not go back to bed. I’m worried about XYZ, and to be able to talk that out and in real time every single day. So we feel fortunate to have found that in each other. We still do that. The winter was kind of funky because we’re in DUMBO, DUMBO.
NYLP: DUMBO Brooklyn.
Mark: It was a cold long winter and we were getting up at [4:45] and [5:00] along with our entire crew. We all kind of looked at each other in the morning, and our talent who are early risers, but oh my gosh, like being bright eyed and bushy tailed at a [5:45] start time. It was a learning curve and everybody did it and everybody was great and we just re-adjusted our lives accordingly. That was an experience.
Ashley: People were like sleeping on couches.
Mark: That was an experience.
Ashley: We literally didn’t sleep and we work seven days a week.
Mark: And this is every day. This is every day. This isn’t okay, oh Friday, so I’ll see you on Monday.
Ashley: There was no weekend.
Mark: This was both of us in the office on the weekend. By the way, when the stream wraps up at [2:00] or [3:00]. Ash and I are just getting started too. We’re there later working on everything else. Again, we continue to do that and we would not change that for the world. But that was a learning experience in those initial months. I think we’re used to it. We have our groove now.
Ashley: I can wake up as early as I need to now.
Mark: Naturally.
NYLP: One of the things you needed to learn was waking up early. But you went from fitness consumer to a provider of fitness. What are some of the other things you need to learn because you brought your talent of being able to evaluate great instructors? What are the things, it’s a whole different world.
Ashley: I think there’s so much, there’s so, like what have we not learned. It’s been the most incredible learning experience of all time. I think from a fitness perspective, we had an idea of what we wanted the offering to be but there was a lot of formatting and programming. We really wanted to make 28 minutes super effective so that you didn’t need to do anything else. Like we wanted people. We were really selling this idea of 28 minutes and we needed it to be as good as it possibly can and to also deliver on all the entertainment aspects that we had talked about in terms of being beat driven. I think that’s something that we learned during the beta period and even a little bit post-launch. But we’re still evaluating and making sure it’s super strong and introducing new things also.
Mark: That’s on the fitness side alone. The full answer is what do we learn is everything, and we’re still learning and there’re still a lot of things that we don’t know. And if we don’t know, we ask. We are open about what we don’t know and we make sure to find an answer. But, even fundraising. You don’t learn how to fundraise in college or in your corporate career in entertainment and how to structure those deals and the structure of a business and employees and how people get paid and legality behind everything and leases. Just the list goes on. And so, these are things that we are now so pleased that we’ve learned and we’ll continue to learn. But the answer is everything. And I would say that anyone listening who’s about to start a business, you kind of have your area of expertise but just get ready to become an expert in any other subjects quickly.
Ashley: I would say that the other obviously, we’re a subscription business and neither of us had worked in a subscription business before. We’d certainly represented different sort of consumer subscription business but never had one ourselves. I think it’s really challenging. It’s a super interesting business and if you hit it right, you can really hit it big. But it’s a matter of getting it right. And so I think, for us, it’s constantly thinking about all right, so now, so you have a new member and then what? How do you keep them excited about what you’re doing and how do you keep them seeing the transformation in their body so that they stay on? How do you keep them engaged and motivated so they don’t churn? There’s so much that you want from them but from a business perspective, you want to make sure that they don’t churn. And so, that retention piece is something that is so key because you can be the best marketer in the world. But if you can’t hold on to people, shame on you. So, I think for us, that’s been something that we’re really excited about figuring out. Coming from the agency business especially on the celeb side, there’s so much creating surprise and delight in the life of your client to keep them excited about the relationship and whatever they’re working on. So, I think that’s something that we’re constantly thinking about with our members is how do we keep them really engaged and excited about what we’re doing.
Mark: I think that that is one of the things that came naturally to us though. The piece about speaking with our member and learning about them is authentic. We love talking to the people who work out with us. We love it. They want something changed and we hear it over and over again, we change it. They have a question, we answer it. We communicate in real time. We know about their kids, we know about their dogs, we know about their husbands. We love speaking with our members. That is short for a long for, customer service is important to us. Making sure that our customer service is prompt and familial is really important to us, and I think we’re doing a really great job at that.
NYLP: What’s one thing that you’ve changed based off of member requests?
Ashley: So in the beginning, we were all live. There’s a lot of reasons live is super important in terms of accountability and creating community, all of that. But unfortunately, we cannot be live 24 hours a day, which we wish we could.
Mark: Dinner time.
Ashley: In time. We introduced replay which is we play back some of the classes and we have a great on-demand library now. But that was something that we learned, I think we made that change in a month and a half in.
Mark: Yeah, a month in. But that was a split second, we saw the comments and we said, okay, that’ll be changed by next week.
Ashley: People wanted classes at [5:00] A.M and we were getting up as early as humanly possible. That’s not humane to anyone. People only could work out in the evenings or whatever. So we had to sort of do right by everyone.
NYLP: I’m glad you brought the engagement piece because that’s something that I was very curious about and customer interaction goes so far. But I know the 80’s and 90’s fitness videos because I saw them in my parents’ house on the bottom of a book shelf, collecting dust, never being used. My mom was in the fitness world. So how are you going to stay relevant beyond customer engagement and everything like that?
Ashley: I think in terms of staying relevant, you know, for us, like, our brand is super visual and we’re all about pop culture and sort of being in the moment and it is very spontaneous. So, I think, there’s a lot of different ways that we can do that from the kind of talent that we choose to just the kind of things that we do. I think the reality is we are, we have a production studio and we have the ability to be live if we wanted to 24 hours a day. There’s a ton of stuff that we can do. So, I think it’s really on us and our imaginations to think up all of the amazing things that our audience wants to learn about, wants to hear about, want to be a part of. I really think the sky’s the limit and every day we’re coming up with new ideas of like amazing people who could guest a class or do a talk. We have these challenges. We did one in the beginning of the summer and we just launched actually our second one today. In those challenges, we have, we bring on great nutritionists and great folks, you know, being in New York, you get to go to stuff all the time. People who are real experts in their field talking about a given subject matter. It’s not necessarily like that everywhere else and there’s not people to facilitate all of that kind of stuff. For us to be able to do that for our members is really cool. It’s super easy for us to do and we really enjoy doing it. I think there’s a really great value added that they’re not getting from another fitness provider let’s say.
Mark: Back to this whole moms working out in our tiny living rooms growing up. My mom would watch Richard Simmons, and she was, 80 whatever, 87, let’s say. She would watch the VHS and there were three classes on the VHS. So when you hit number three, you hit rewind and went back to number one. I actively remember being like mom, you already did that one, you already heard that song, you already saw them do the twirl. You did that class. That bothered me. So to combat that, we always keep things fresh. P.S., if you’re a member and you want to watch the same replay class over and over again, God bless, do it, enjoy it. But if you want something fresh every day, we are providing you with many things that are fresh every day. As fitness trends change, which we all know they do, we’re glad to be at the cutting edge of it. We’re quickly learning that our members want something with heavier weights. So come September, actually starting now, we’re adding heavier weights, giving people ways to level up as we say, to increase the resistance or increase the weight. We’re constantly thinking of new modalities. And even if you can only work out with us on replay, we are refreshing those on demand classes every single day. So you really can never get bored with your workout with obé.
NYLP: What are the types of classes that you’re offering now?
Ashley: So we have dance cardio, sculpting. We’ve hit classes, strength classes, power, which is the new class with heavier weights. We have yoga, if you want to level up your yoga practice, we have yoga sculpt with weights. We have a yoga circuit class. We do choreo. We have the Rickey sisters who are this like amazing duo that teach hip hop choreo, and then another girl, Sarah Burke, who also is a choreo instructor. This is a great thing is like we can always add new people and new classes to keep it really fresh. Like Mark said, I think the variety is super important to keep people engaged and excited about.
Mark: And choreo is short for choreography, which is pretty new to me. But, dance cardio, you’ll find as one of our cardio base verticals every single day. The choreo piece is usually a Sunday activation where it’s like, all right, I worked out all week, I still want to get a sweat in but I want to do something different, something a little bit fun, maybe something with my kids or my friends or my sister or whomever. Learning a dance to a fun song and then potentially taking a video of yourself and putting it on Instagram and showing your friends is just a really fun connected experience. Our members have been really enjoying that.
NYLP: Do you have plans to expand the class offerings? Sounds like you’re starting to do that now.
Mark: We’re looking, always looking, always looking.
Ashley: Always.
Mark: Ashley and I, and that continues to be Ashley and I, as far as consumers of fitness, trying something new all the time. Hey, did you do this, did you try her? Did you work out with him? What did you think? What was the workout like? We want to provide that same experience to our members who are doing this at home or just don’t even have access to the variety of classes that we do here in New York. So again, we want to make sure that they’re having that same experience with obé wherever they are.
NYLP: And you have this member base and you have classes. Do you think you’ll do more than classes, teachings?
Mark: Ashley and I, we love to partner up in different ways. So we are talking with a bunch of partners now who are not in the fitness space. How can we work together? That’s kind of one of the fun pieces of this job. How can we work together. As I said in the beginning, we listen to our members. So, if our members are craving something else from us, you bet we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure out how to get it to them.
NYLP: Like nutrition or something like that.
Ashley: Absolutely.
Mark: If that’s what they want, that is what we will figure out.
NYLP: And how are you getting your users now?
Ashley: We’re really a brand that’s being built on social. So, that’s the way we started when this was just a tiny idea, we created an Instagram account and we were posting photos and images of things that we like, that we thought were really cool, that could be obé at some point. And so, that’s really where we started. It sort of has evolved from there. But I think that Instagram is kind of our home and we will be on other platforms and spend more time on other platforms as well. But Instagram really has been like a great driver for us. It’s amazing, we’ve had so many friends and people who we know from the entertainment business who have been really supportive and helpful, who have influence and have an audience and they’ve helped to spread the word about what we’re doing. Up until now, there really hasn’t been a lot of paid marketing. It really has been people who are lovers of the brand who organically post about it. And I think that, I think that that’s helped us to figure out who our audience really is, to know exactly who she is and what she wants and why she comes to us so that when we ramp up all of these other sort of marketing efforts, we’re going after the right person. We know that there’s a clear market fit.
Mark: And these people are genuinely working out with us. If there’s someone on social media with a large following who post, obviously, that’s incredible awareness for a young company like ours. But they are working out with us. We are an authentic, authentic company. We want to make sure that anybody posting is working out. The social media piece is important because it also goes back to that community. We love to repost selfies of our members who are posting pictures of they’re working out with their dogs, they’re working out with a baby in a bassinet in the corner, they’re working out with their partner or their colleagues at work. On a mega yacht, on a tiny little boat. We have seen people working out everywhere and we love to spread the word that way. Again, going back to communicating with our member or member to be, Instagram’s a really direct way to talk to people. And so, when people reach out to us, we respond right away or we reach out to them directly and talk. We like having a conversation. We want as many people who want to work out at home, whether they know it or not yet to be working out with us because we know that what we are offering, what we are creating is really, really special and effective.
NYLP: What would you say the obé brand stands for?
Ashley: It’s an acronym.
Mark: We’ll give you the two answers.
Ashley: We’ll give you two answers.
Mark: So that’s an interesting story. So obé itself actually stands for Our Body Electric. That was the initial name of the company, Our Body Electric. Our, being indicative of community. Body, obviously, we’re in the health and wellness business and Electric as our vibe. But it’s also a mouthful. And so, we shortened it to an acronym and decided on obé which is great because it’s a command, it’s a command to listen to yourself. It’s a command to do what you need to do to live a healthy, happy life for you and those around you.
NYLP: Follow me.
Mark: Follow me. But Our Body Electric was actually inspired by the Walt Whitman poem, I Sing the Body Electric, a very famous poem written 1855 by Walt Whitman who lived around the corner from us in Brooklyn, which we found out after settling on our space in DUMBO And so, that’s really, really special to us. What we stand for as a company, things that we really care about is we care about accessibility. We care about accessibility from a cost perspective, from a location perspective and from a timing perspective. Costs were $27 a month. The average cost of one studio class across the country, you’re getting unlimited content for $27. Accessibility as it relates to geography. You don’t live in New York, you don’t live in Los Angeles, you don’t live in Miami or wherever. Doesn’t matter. Work out with us. And also from a timing perspective. 28 minutes or an hour, whatever you’re doing in and out. No driving 25 minutes to another studio, 25 minutes back waiting for the class to start. It’s efficient. We care deeply about the advocacy. We analyze, we scrutinize every single one of our workouts. How effective is it? Are people feeling sore the next day? Everybody’s got to be sore the next day. That’s really important to us, the community as discussed at length in this conversation, and then the fun, the vibe, the positivity, the upbeat. We have had, she’ll remain nameless and so will her institution but we had a professor on maternity leave from an Ivy League institution reach out to us and say, you know, I’ve seen it all, I’ve done it all and I work and I have kids and I have a lot going on and the time that I spend with you just makes me feel so great. It makes me so happy. I just want to say thank you. So that piece of it, the fun, the positivity, the upbeat, that is through everything we do.
NYLP: And it’s very cool.
Mark: And the cool factor.
NYLP: I think it’s in part because you have celebrities doing it. Did you leverage some of your talent connections to gain a celebrity following?
Mark: Here’s the thing. Ashley and I come from a world of Hollywood. Former clients and also close friends happen to have large platforms and that’s pretty incredible, especially for a starting business. So, for people who have posted or spoken on behalf of the company, they are working out with us. They’ve seen what we’ve been building since we were looking for real estate in Manhattan before we even knew where we were going in DUMBO. They’ve been along for that ride learning about our vision and what we intend to do. Also, for those individuals who might have let’s say a bold face name, they’re traveling. They have a lot going on. They have lives too, busy careers and kids and you name it. And so, obé has been great for them whether they’re on vacation, whether they’re taking meetings in a different city on a set, you name it. We provided a platform for them to exercise and feel a great burn while they’re away as well. So, that’s been important to us.
NYLP: And so, for some of the people who haven’t researched you like I have, who are some of the boldface names that are shouting you out?
Ashley: It’s on Instagram.
Mark: It’s on Instagram. There’s a lot.
Ashley: Everyone from Katie Lee to Daphne Oz to …
Mark: To Kelly Ripa, to different fashion influencers like Daniel Bernstein and Dr. Oz. A lot of really incredible people whom we deeply admire have been supportive of what we’re doing, and again, are using the product and give us notes. Katie is a great example because she’s been such a tremendous supporter. She gives notes. I’ll go get an email, hey, the standing ab series from yesterday’s class was great. I think that there should be a 10 minute express standing abs in the library. I think you should have that out soon. People will love that. Great, let’s book it. The authenticity piece is really important to us.
NYLP: How many people are in a class on average?
Ashley: It really just depends.
Mark: Not to be annoying, we don’t talk about those actual, those numbers that are sort of in- house ratings, but a lot. It grows every day. For Ashley and I, that’s been sort of the wild ride of obé is seeing those numbers grow, seeing cities tuned in, towns tuned in that we’ve never heard of. It’s truly a geography lesson when we see certain places pop up. That has been incredible for us. So watching that grow and watching the territories grow. This is the craziest thing. When you watch a class and you see who’s logged in and you see X number of people from the same small town or same sort of smaller city, it’s like, do they know each other? You just start to wonder and you start to picture what it looks like and you kind of want to, if they don’t know each other, you want to get them together so they can work out with each other. Those possibilities are endless for us as a company, we think about that. How do we continue to unite our members who are exercising with us.
NYLP: And the path to growth, do you need more of a runway? How are you going to get there?
Ashley: Eventually, we’ll certainly raise more money.
Mark: Yeah. We’re going to raise. We’ve been approached recently by some incredible institutional investors that we’re so flattered and it’s amazing, we’re really enjoying those conversations. We will definitely raise more money. It’s going to take more money to grow. So, definitely a priority.
NYLP: What are the other avenues because it seems like you mentioned retail and merchandise?
Mark: The main avenue is subscription. We want as many people who want to be working out with us to know about us and have the opportunity to work out in this capacity with us. With that, we love brand. Ashley will be the first to tell you. I love brand. I like to shop. When I find a brand I love, I want it in my life in so many ways. I know a lot of other consumers are like that too. Back to the food thing, if you want to be with us in a nutritional capacity, let’s figure it out. If you want to wear a sweatshirt that has our name on it, cool, awesome, let’s figure it out. And so we think about those things. Again, we are focused on reaching as many customers right now as possible, but as those other avenues open up, we will assess it.
NYLP: You have this wonderful online fitness brand and it seems like you’re the first one that’s really starting in-home aside from having an actual piece of equipment like a bicycle or rowing machine or treadmill that you have to do with screen. What’s to stop someone, you know, like a gym, like an Equinox or something like that saying, we have the fitness instructors, we have the knowledge, we’re going to do this and jump on obé’s turf.
Ashley: Listen, any year, people could do that. That’s a plausible thing I’m sure. I’m sure people will. We know that that will happen. I think what makes what we’re doing really special is what we bring to the table in terms of the way that we think about the consumer and the way that we, the way that we envision the kind of value that we can bring to someone. I think that that’s something that most people don’t think about if you’re just sort of a hardnosed dollar and cents type person, you kind of lose the human connection and the human touch, which is I think key for us in terms of how we’re building obé.
Mark: Absolutely. Again, no one in this room, no one in the current marketplace invented the idea of exercising at home. We look at fitness in general like food, everybody’s got to eat, there’s a lot of varieties of food. You might have one type on Monday and another type on Tuesday and the list goes on. And so, we know what we’ve got. We know that our offering is incredible, it’s effective, our talent are the best in the business and our members are the best in the business and we’re proud of that.
We have priced our offering in a way that if there are other things that people want to do, great. If you want to work out with us every single day, awesome. If you want to work out with us three times a week and go to a spin class, the other day in a personal trainer, the other day are pilates, incredible. You do what you need to do for your fitness routine and for your health. So, we think there’s a lot of room for everyone. We will very confidently say what we have built and continue to build is really special and no one can take that away from us that’s for sure.
NYLP: How many classes on average does a user take?
Mark: It depends. There’s really two types of users. There’s a user who will watch, who will take 40 classes a month, so 28 minute classes, 40 classes a month. And then there’s another user back to my other example who will do a couple a week. And obviously, there’s people in the middle too. But the person who’s doing a couple a week is a regular user but they also have other, maybe they’re part of a running club. Maybe they go to an in-person yoga class or they go hiking which is great. We do have a large number of users where we are there fitness everything as we like to call it because we are providing them with their fitness experience from soup to nuts at a really incredible price.
NYLP: So could you imagine doing this any place other than New York?
Mark: Oh, that’s a great question.
Ashley: That is a great question. Yeah, I think LA is a ripe market, certainly.
Mark: I think it’s New York or Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an incredible fitness community and we definitely look at it regularly. But yeah, I think New York and Los Angeles. And again, I think that from a production perspective too, right, because New York and Los Angeles also have the technicians of the behind the scenes work. The camera operators, the sound engineers, the graphics engineers, the editing, all the other things that go into this, it’s a very specific art form really, this idea of streaming so much live content and editing it in real time. There’s multiple cameras that are being edited in real time. So, from a talent perspective, in front of and behind the camera, New York and Los Angeles.
NYLP: Well, I was hoping you’d give more of a shout out to New York seeing as this is the New York Launch Pod but could you talk a little bit more about the talent in New York particularly?
Ashley: Yeah, yeah. The talent New York is amazing. A lot of the talent that we found again, they’re performers so they come to New York primarily for the stage and which obviously is different than an Los Angeles based performer. So kudos to all of our New York folks. We have instructors who have been in all of the big Broadway shows and I think that’s a really special thing because they bring that same kind of energy, they bring that same kind of energy to our studio every day.
Mark: That’s something that I feel like we haven’t really touched on. All of our talent, they have a story. That’s why when I say the best side dish, we have someone who’s the captain of the Nets dance team, you know, the Brooklyn Nets. We have someone who’s a Goldman Sachs investment banker who teaches with us at six in the morning live, showers and goes to her banking job or to the airport for a meeting in Toronto or Chicago or wherever she’s going on a given day and then comes back and the next day and works out with us. We have someone who’s lost 100 pounds who fancies himself to be like a modern day Richard Simmons who is out there motivating people to get up and move and get that best body possible and that best life possible. And so, that’s really important to us. You do in New York find a melting pot of a lot of great skill sets and a lot of great stories. I think that our members appreciate and identify with that.
NYLP: That is a wonderful note to wrap things up on. How do people find out more about you and obé?
Ashley: So they should go to www.obéfitness.com. For all of your listeners, we love to offer a code for 50% off the first month in addition to the seven day free trial. The code is ‘NYLAUNCH’.
NYLP: Follow you on Instagram?
Mark: Follow us on the gram. obé_fitness.
NYLP: Well, Ashley Mills, Mark Mullet, thank you for sharing your time with us and stepping onto the New York Launch Pod.
Ashley: Thanks for having us.
NYLP: If you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media @nylaunchpod and visit us at nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode including this one. And, if you are a super fan, Mark and Ashley, are you super fans?
Mark: Oh, we’re super fans.
Ashley: We’re super fans, yeah.
NYLP: If you’re super fans like Mark and Ashley, you can leave a review on iTunes and Apple podcast. It does help people discover the show and is greatly appreciated.
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