WHOOP Podcast - Empowering Women in Health and Business with Sadie Lincoln

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

On this week’s episode WHOOP Founder and CEO Will Ahmed is joined by barre3 Co-Founder and CEO Sadie Lincoln. Barre3 is a fitness company focused on teaching people to be balanced in body and empowered from within. Beyond running her company and being a global spokesperson, Sadie still enjoys teaching barre3 classes to many of her founding clients in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. Will and Sadie discuss how Sadie got into barre (1:38), the biggest difference from the first barre3 studio to now (4:23), what makes barre unique (7:16), teaching and coaching clients (12:15), using WHOOP (17:00), Sadie teaching classes (21:52), work-life balance with a loved one (24:35), what it means to be inside your body (27:41), the difference between being a founder and CEO (37:32), and advice to other female CEOs (39:27). Resources:barre3.comSadie’s InstagramSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks, welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we sit down with top athletes, researchers, scientists, and more to learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. If you're thinking about joining Woop, you can visit our website to sign up for a 30-day free trial membership. That's right, try Woop for 30 days at no cost you. that's whoop.com. Today I'm joined by Bar 3 co-founder and CEO, Sadie Lincoln.

Bar 3 is a fitness company focused on teaching people to be balanced in body and empowered from within. Beyond running her company and being a global spokesperson, Sadie still enjoys teaching bar three classes to many of her founding clients in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. We discuss how Sadie first founded Bar 3, what makes the practice unique, how Sadie is using Whoop, and how she hopes her clients will as well through our new partnership, creating a work-life balance with a loved one, Sadie and her husband founded and still run Bar 3 together, what it means to be inside your body, the difference between being

a founder and a CEO, and Sadie's thoughts for other female CEOs. If you have a question with the answer on the podcast, email us, podcast at Whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. All right, here is my conversation with Bar 3, co-founder and CEO, Sadie Lincoln. Sadie, welcome to the Woof podcast. Thanks. Nice to be here. As a starting point, I'd love to understand how you got into bar. Well, how I got into bar as a niche, when I lived in San Francisco, the bar method and the daily method were fun workouts that I enjoyed.

When I would visit Manhattan, I'd go to Corfusion, which was one of the first bar workouts and Physique 57. seven, some of the original people who kind of branched out of the Lottie Burke method, which is the heritage of traditional bar, those women all started those different brands. So that's where I was introduced to bar. I worked at the daily method for about six months after having my second child. And that was an amazing experience. And I was also simultaneously going through a yoga works yoga instructor training and trying to figure out if I was going to actually open up yoga works in the Bay Area and kind of started to fuse those two principles together, the mindfulness of yoga, with some of the efficiencies

of bar that I really loved. And at what point did you say to yourself, I'm going to found a company here? I think this is maybe true with most entrepreneurs, but I've always known I was going to run my own company. I didn't know what. And my husband happens to have this entrepreneurial gene as well. So over the years, even while we were working at 24 Our Fitness Together, which we did, which was very entrepreneurial, we actually started a new concept under the parent company that was a small circuit-only concept that I got to conceptualize in terms of the brand and the product and Chris was the operator and financial backing of it. So we kind of tested our entrepreneurial spirit there. But behind the scenes, we were putting together business plans all the time,

trying to figure out how we were going to make it on our own with our own concepts. And we did everything from nail salons to a pizza business to plant watering business. It's kind of comical when we look back on some of the ideas we had together. And it wasn't until, you know, I had kind of a moment of awareness that why don't I start my own fitness concept? This has been my life since I was 19 years old. And why don't I create something that's missing that I'm not getting that I need in the fitness industry. And then, you know, everything took off after that. Well, congratulations. I mean, you've now gone from a single studio in Portland, Oregon. You now have 185 franchise studios. You got the online workout studio. We at Woop are very excited

to be partners with you all and hopefully introduce WOOP to more people who do bar and vice versa. what's the biggest difference if you think back on it to that very first studio and where you are today that's a really good question well for one thing i'm not teaching 19 classes a week holding babies in child care and cleaning the toilets that is a meaningful difference yeah but i'm so glad i did all that because i still feel really close to the product and what it means to open your own studio. We are 100% owned and operated by women who are a lot like me in some sense, wanted to do something in their own community aligned with their own values in the fitness space. So what's changed for me professionally is I am now focused on making

sure they are all successful versus my studio that I started with. And bar three, even from the very beginning when we sat in a circle, our primary kind of anchor core value is collective wisdom combined with this idea of love of learning and collective wisdom, we now say stronger together, but it's the same idea in that I would always say the one thing that never changes at bar three is that we're always changing. We are always, always changing because we need to evolve based on what we're learning about what our clients need. And so here we are 16 years later, while our core values and our philosophy has been rock solid and hasn't changed,

how we teach and our approach has been refined, has evolved to continue to meet our client where they need to be. And beyond the studio walls, including this partnership with you all, you know, really being able to help her develop body wisdom. And I say her. We welcome all genders, but most of our clients identify as women. We've added new formats. We have B3 strength now.

We have B3 cardio, B3 mindful flow. Our bar three signature class combines those three elements, strength, cardio, and mindfulness, all in one. And then we've kind of done a deep dive with those elements with their own formats. That's been really successful. Our online streaming presence, be able to reach people when they leave studio walls and people in over 100 countries now through our online workouts. We've started those in 2011. We were one of the early, early adopters of online workouts, and that was just me answering

a problem that my clients were having, like, hey, how do I do this when I'm on vacation in Hawaii? Lots of change in innovation, but I will say that the values have remained constant. They haven't changed. For folks listening to this who are like, okay, there's yoga, there's Pilates, there's Barr, they're all kind of the same thing. You know, like help explain what makes bar unique. First of all, all fitness is good for you. Agreed. And when you study fitness scientifically or in a lab, you know it works.

Like we all know it works. I think, you know, when I started out in the industry in the 90s, it was about educating the consumer that fitness is good for you. I think we all know that now. we know a lot more of why fitness is good for you. Why I started bar three is, well, fitness is so good for us and we know we want to do it. And I'm a high achieving woman. Why do I have so much pain in my body from doing this fitness thing I've been told to do? And more importantly, why do I have psychological pain and shame in my body? I thought fitness was supposed

to make me feel and look awesome. And I am not experiencing that. And so I think what makes bar three different is a mindfulness approach that when you do a bar three workout, you will hear very specific language in our classes designed to keep you honest and present in your body as it is. And then proceed with purpose based on that wisdom that you learn about your body as you're moving. That formula creates, well, it's like a shame buster because you're not worried about what everybody else looks like in the room and you're also not worried about looking different then you look that day. And it builds strength.

It builds a sense of empowerment. Like this workout is for me. It's designed for me. I own it versus trying to do something that everybody else is doing to look a certain way that I'll never get to because it's imagined anyways. So the mindfulness component and how that plays out directly is through modifications. We have a way of teaching a really highly effective, efficient class that moves that's challenging and exciting while modifying.

So we have a way to keep the flow going, but you can still choose different moves based on any negative pain you have in your joints. And you're celebrated for that versus it looking like you're kind of taking an easy way out or not really achieving or, you know, kind of all these old stories we have about modifying. So modifying being a key sort of difference to help women or really anyone doing the classes, find the right positions and the right classes. for them, so to speak. Yeah, and I think yoga has the philosophy of modifications, and I did learn a lot from my training in yoga and being a practitioner, but yoga flow didn't have a lot of room to modify. It was, it flowed.

And there was either the flow, which I really like because it was athletic and efficient, but there wasn't time to, like, change and, like, I have wrist issues. I can't do another chaturanga. And then the yoga classes that allowed a lot of space for modifications, frankly, felt sleepy. Like we'd all kind of pause and go look at a client that's modifying and learn from that. And it was more of a workshop versus a efficient workout.

And then bar at the time was very uniform. It still is traditional bar is very uniform. And you're celebrated for doing the same thing at the ballet bar. And it's very much traditional bar is very tied to a heritage. and doing it the same, which is a beautiful thing. It's like ballet or any discipline is very much about the heritage. And that didn't work for me in a lot of bodies that I work with because, you know, not all moves are designed for everybody.

Let's design a program around the client versus the heritage. All of that investigation I was doing on my own just as like a data point of one and wondering if other people needed that as much as I. did. Obviously, there's a lot of different points of view on how to motivate someone in a class or in a gym or in a fitness environment just sort of broadly. And I feel like, at least for me personally, I've kind of gravitated to the coach or the trainer who wants to take me to an uncomfortable place. And like in a way, I go into a fitness class and I say to myself, I want to get taken to an uncomfortable place. I want to kind of like see if I can rise to that occasion. And

in a sense, growing up and being like doing a lot of different sports and things, I kind of thought that was maybe the default, so to speak, of like how a coach or a trainer drives you. And you obviously have instructed, gosh knows how many classes. And you've built this whole philosophy at bar three that I think is, it's kind of. kind of in contrast to that, which is how do we meet you where you are today and make sure you do something? And how do we make it create a feeling that keeps you coming back? I mean, is that a fair sort of summary? Yes and no. So one of the things that's core to how we teach is we teach clients to get out of comfort.

So we have a model. Comfort in the center. This is the comfort zone. That's where you retreat on autopilot. Like some of our clients that have been coming a long time, they're just kind of in autopilot. And they can get through it. They get a pretty good workout that's comfortable.

Or comfort can be, you know, instead bending on Netflix, like on the couch, not even going into the studio, right? But once you're in class, we teach, train our clients and ask them questions. Like, are you in comfort zone? How can you jump, how can you step out of comfort just enough? And the next ring is what we call brave space because that's where you grow. Brave space is when you're out of comfort just enough and you're pushing your body with alignment, with integrity so you don't have pain in your joints, but you feel a deep muscle burn.

And maybe your heart rate is up a little more than you're used to. Or you're staying in the balance a little more. Or maybe you're modifying. Maybe that is getting out of comfort is modifying because you're letting go of your ego and you're doing what your body really needs to do. That's where we grow. Where we don't grow, and this is where most people go in the fitness industry, they go from comfort to what we call the fight zone. That's where you're pushing your body past the brave space into fight zone, where your cortisol goes through the roof, where you're prone to injury,

and where shame loves to live. That's where we compare ourselves to other. We're not good enough, no pain, no gain. Sweat is your fat crying? I mean, all these ridiculous, in my opinion, ridiculous mantras we have in the fitness industry that drive us to that fight zone. And what happens is you go to the fight zone. So you got motivated from comfort. You go straight to fight zone. You get injured and you go right back to comfort. Then you scroll through your phone. You find the next fitness modality. You go right to fight zone. You know, you do it for a while. You maybe lose weight. You build muscle. But then you get injured and you go right back to comfort zone. Right. So the goal is to keep them in that

brave space and tying it to the whoop. What I love about the whoop is it's I last week it was telling me, hey, slow down, slow down a little. You know, you're going into fights zone. Your strain is too high. Your your HRB is going down right now. You're not sleeping as well. Even though I felt like I was really healthy and I was I was really pushing myself. I was pushing myself too far and that was such good wisdom for me. Like I went further than my growth zone, you know, where I grow. That's what we do at bar three. And I think sometimes we call it, it's sort of like sneaky hard because it's deeply challenging. You'll be very sore afterwards, but because we're so helping clients stay so present and in their breath and in their body, it doesn't feel like a fight. And so I think

people think that's easy. Maybe it is. There's a sense of ease to it, but there's definitely more results as well, long-term results. Well, I actually founded whoop because I would over-train as a college athlete. So this idea of getting fitter to me was just training really hard every day. And I didn't have a mindset around recovery or really balance. I kind of was in just like a more is more stage in my life. And so doing a lot of research around sleep and recovery and the metrics that underline many of the scores that you see today, that for me was quite fascinating, quite eye-opening.

And you're right in that a lot of the app is designed such that your recovery score is in a sense dictating how much strain you may want to take on for the day. And so phase one of that journey for a lot of people is realizing they're actually run down a lot of the time and they need to give their body a break more often. And I think you described some of that very, very eloquently, Sadie. And then there's another phase, though, which I think is a really powerful phase too, which is like you start to realize, well, you want to be well recovered as much as possible so that you can then take on more too. And that's, that then gets you down a whole rabbit hole of new habits around sleep, around, you know, meditation, around mindfulness, around diet.

And that's, it's, you know, kind of a lifelong journey, if you will. But I'm curious if you've experienced any of that as you've used the product. Most certainly. I was just talking to my husband about it. I'm sort of, I'm obsessed. I was saying to him that it's been a nice surprise for me with Woop is instead of going to the news and sort of. mindfully scrolling through the news, which has been my routine in the mornings, I now go to

my own news. I go to the whoop and I like scroll through my own news, like what's happening in my body today, you know? It's been really interesting. And I was just telling him how the littlest things can make a big difference. And I know that as a fitness professional and a wellness professional. I've been doing this for, I don't, 30 years. I know it intellectually. I studied it. But to see it in my own body just has given me a more holistic wisdom around myself. And I'm really big on body wisdom. And so one of the reasons I started bar three, just a side little tangent, one of the reasons I started bar three was to get people out of external metrics and in their body. I used to go to the gym, for example. I would count calories all day long, like how much food

I was putting in my body. And then I would go to the gym and I'd get on the treadmill and I would run and watch how many calories I was burning while like watching a show and listening to music and just trying to disassociate from my body with all the external metrics, you know, to get me somewhere. And that routine was just a negative spiral and put me into fight zone over and over again. So for many years at bar three, we didn't want to measure anything because we wanted to train our clients to listen and trust their body and their intuition and their own wisdom and to let go of all the formulas. And then when we found Woop and the team definitely put it through our whole R&D process, we were so excited because it actually enhanced the body wisdom. It gave it a more

depth. And it has allowed, like for me, for a very specific, example is my relationship with alcohol right now. Really thinking this through. I'm 51 years old. It's been so normalized in my life to have a glass of wine at night. When I have one drink, and my rule is one or less, no, one drink or less, one drink directly impacts my HRB. And it's clear. There's no question at this point. So that's so exciting and motivating for me. you know, I remember that when I was just out with a couple of friends and ordered sparkly water and, you know, bitters and soda. And I did that because I was thinking about my, my woof metrics. I'm like that, you know, it's really supporting what my body knows and what my wisdom knows and what's really good for me right now.

And what I really need right now to be healthy and feel like I'm winning every morning when I get up. Yeah, I think the wisdom being supported by by those kinds of metrics is refreshingly. helpful it really is yeah there's a recurring theme of managing what you measure with woo and there's like this massive i think accountability that you build with yourself when you realize how these you know otherwise seemingly inconsequential decisions of an extra drink or going outside or when you had coffee or conversation before bed you know all of a sudden you realize how dramatically they can affect your body. Dogs in the bedroom.

There you go. Have you noticed anything else, like, what might you be tracking in the whoop journal where you can put in things like alcohol and slept with your dogs and those sorts of things? Are there any other things that you've noticed that you've noticed have been really positive or negative on your overall body? Well, positive. I do the AG. I was excited that AG1 is in there.

Okay. Yeah. So that that's, but I do that already. That's part of my system. I'm trying to take calcium every day. So it's just helping me remember if I don't do it. Yeah. wearing my mouth guard. Like some of these like basic things to journal it the next day and to see if I did it or not. Just that reminder is really helpful. Trying to think what else. Dogs in the bedroom. That was, that's a new one. Didn't think about that one. Yeah. I think my sleep's been great. I had 100% last night. Well, you seem very dialed in. So I'm not surprised. Yeah. Now, do you still ever teach classes or you're totally out of that? No, I teach every Tuesday morning, 845 here in Portland. Hard to get in because it's the same clients that have been going for like 15 years with me. A lot of them. Love them so much. It's truly. always the highlight of my week. It's my absolute flow state for me. It's my favorite thing to do. If it's your favorite thing, why not do two or three? It's a good question. It's just the right balance for me right now. It feels really good to plug in and then give myself space to take class. I'm loving B3 strength, B3 cardio, B3 mindful flow. I will definitely teach. I don't teach the other two formats except bar three signature of course but taking i want to take i want to

be a client more time to be outside to um take long long walks and hikes biking big i skied all season um so for me it's really having a more well-rounded way of exercising and also pulling out of my business you know this is an entrepreneur and the founder of your company. Pulling out of my business has served bar three. It gives everybody space to innovate and grow and take bar three where it needs to be versus me kind of hanging on to what I started and my own vision of it. Bar three is where it is today because of my team who I have really empowered to make decisions and to teach more classes and to innovate and to take it where it needs to be. So part of it's a self-awareness that I need to get out of my own way. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care

about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com. It measures everything around sleep. recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. You've built this business with your husband, it sounds like, as well. What is your advice to being business, you know, for people out there who are thinking about starting a business with their loved one or their partner or their spouse, like, what's your advice in that?

Therapy, executive coaching, for sure. Those two things really do help. For each individual or like a team thing? Yes. Individual therapy, individual coaching, couples therapy. couple coaching. I'm a big fan of bringing in outside experts. No matter if you're partnered or not with, you know, your business partner is also your married partner or not. It's just important for your health and well-being. And we all deserve that kind of attention and that kind of discipline. Definitely helps. I would also say that if you're budding heads right in the beginning, it's probably not a good sign.

Like, you'll know if you're meant to be married and run a business together or not. Chris and I 100% are. Like, it's our dance. It is our magic. It is our chemistry. Even this morning, my Yeti mic was broken. He was running around the house, finding me the, you know, the right plug for the, he's just a lot of times behind the scenes.

He likes that role. He likes. I'm usually on the stage giving the presentation, but behind the scenes, he's with me with a wall of sticky, is like a beautiful mind, like trying to figure things out. And he's like helping me ground concepts and helps me practice before I get on the stage. Like, you know, he does the financials, a lot of them. That's his key accountability, legal, franchise law, all that has really a thing he enjoys. So we have a real good divide of skill sets, but also a real appreciation for our chemistry and how we work together. Well, that's really nice. Sounds like it's been an amazing

partnership. Do you find that when you do classes, you can't help but be critiquing the instructor in your mind? No, I really don't. The only thing I do do, I will critique the studio. And it's more of a, because I own these studios is when I take classes here in Portland, I'm like, oh, there's a dust bunny over there, that lights flickering, or sound system is not quite right.

more of that but I am a client when I am in those and instructors know this like I often close my eyes because I am aware that people know I'm in the room and I have to like work a little harder to get inside my body versus perform or feel performative so they all know I'm like if I'm closing my eyes I won't smile in class and that's a good sign that means I am so deep in my body that all I forgot to perform and I forgot to make you feel good because you're doing such a good job keeping me in my body. And I'll tell people that sometimes if I'm going to a new instructor, I let them know I'm coming so I don't like scare them

because no matter what, it's a little, I think, jarring for people. But truly, like, what's going on in the inside is I need that workout as much as the person next to me at the bar. What does it mean to you to be inside your body? That's such a good question. I call it the inner landscape, like turning the mind's eye inward. So very specifically, like noticing the most telling sensations in my body, you know, while I'm exercising, for example, just really asking myself, what is the most telling

sensation in my body? Maybe it's the feeling of my shirt, like, resting on my chest as I take an inhale. Maybe it's a deep burn in my quadriceps. maybe it's like a negative ache in my wrist. That's the most telling sensation. And just breathe into it, notice it, and then proceed with purpose. So that's the inner landscape. It's just practicing, listening and being present to sensations in the body, including breath. And that's the tool. That's the pull up for mindfulness. Because where I tend to go and all of us humans go is while we're working out, our thoughts hijack us from that, right? They pull us to like what we

watched on TV or what we need to do the next day or what everybody else is doing in the room or how you look in the mirror or, you know, whatever, mindfulness thinking, just kind of like pulling you out of that experience. And the way to pop that thought bubble quickly is to just ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? And that is going inside. You can't, feelings are from the inside, not, not the outside. Is that something you feel like you've always been connected to throughout your life? Or did you have something of a breakthrough or like an awakening to starting to feel that side of you?

Really good question. No. Most, in fact, most of my fitness career, I was so disassociated from the inside, focusing on the outside. Like I was saying the outside metrics, like what I looked like. You know, I was exercising to be winning, to be sexy, to be appealing, to to win the race, to go harder, to go stronger, all those things. My big aha moment was when I became pregnant with my first child. And for the first time, I would go to classes, but it was hard for me to move in a way that I felt like was honoring this growing being inside of me.

So I started to work out at home. and for the first time I started to exercise to honor how my body was growing and changing in that very moment versus trying to shape my body into something different. Like if you think about it, a pregnant woman can't shape their body into something different on purpose. Like it just happens. It's intuitive. And I remember, I remember exactly where I was.

It was in our rental in the Oakland Hills. I was working out and I had this aha moment. I'm like, oh my gosh, maybe I'm not feeling fitness. Maybe fitness is failing me. I've been doing this wrong this whole time. I need a move to honor my body versus moving to get my body so everybody else honors it. And that was a huge paradigm shift for me. And that was the seed of bar three.

That was the very that I planted it and I was like, huh. And then I like proceeded and did all the things. And I finally came back to it after my second child. why we started bar three. But even once we started bar three, it's a practice over and over again. I would have to be called back in, called back in. There was a moment when I trained Madonna, which pinched me moment. He still can't believe that happened.

And it got out, the word got out. And I was suddenly being approached by producers and opportunities because I could be the face of bar. I had the makings to, you know, make their kind of fitness in the box concepts explode. And I quickly signed the contracts. I was so excited to be on the world stage that way. You know, and both of those projects pulled me out of my inner awareness to this external version of who I am supposed to be.

I was so distracted. I wasn't present with my family. I wasn't present with my company. I was probably a pain in the ass to work with during this year, a couple of years. And they Photoshop me. They had me lose weight for things. They, you know, there was all this discovery, even within that. And while I was teaching bar three and trying to honor these values, I was kind of defying

them or abandoning them. And it was really special because in that little era, we were starting to stream workouts. And it was around 2011, 2012. And some of our clients wrote in and started to say things to us like to me, specifically, Sadie, lose the bronzer. We like you as you are. Please don't tell me to do this move. to look better. I'm doing it to be strong. That's why I signed up.

So our client-based prud of, you know, nudged me back into like, no, keep your values the way you are. That's why we're here. That's why we love bar three. Yeah, it's a practice. You know, it's definitely a practice for all of us to stay in murder and move in a way that honors what we really need. When those features or documentaries or whatever came out, like did you, what did you feel when you watched them for the first time? Miserable. Miserable. I mean, I'm just writing about this.

You know, that moment when you unbox your book, like it's supposed to be this wonderful moment. The book that I had written with a publisher, they had the name already picked out, and then they found me. It was Love Your Lower Body. They had already tested the name, and then they found the spokesperson or the celebrity

to kind of push into that model, right? and it was the cut my mom and I were in the kitchen we unboxed it and we both burst out laughing my mom was like you look like a soap opera actor playing yourself like it was photoshopped and it was just it just wasn't me it just wasn't me it wasn't authentic so did it come out as a while ago everyone's going to Google this now go ahead Google it yeah it's not my proudest thing because and it's not their fault I signed up for something that wasn't in alignment with our values. We sold the book for a while in our studios, and then we had a conversation about our core values, and we pulled them, you know. And that's an example of our definition of a core value is we're willing to take a financial hit to uphold it. And that was a true moment where we took a financial hit, you know, all that inventory at the time it was DVDs as well, pulled them from our shelves because they just, it wasn't a true, true version of me

or bar three or what our clients need and wanted. So it was a good lesson. Well, I'm sure you'll have the opportunity to do it in the authentic way. I mean, I think even the story you just told is the seed of a pretty good re-rack on the book. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The community pulling you back in is an interesting thing. It's so a powerful thing about building something that has a strong set of values.

because like we have this with whoop where you know we built a brand and a community and in some ways it's a little bit cult like at times with the way that people on whoop talk about being on whoop or talk to one another about who but there have certainly been these moments where we've seen the community like pull us back on course right and you described that really well with you becoming a slightly different version of yourself and your community noticing and saying, hey, Sadie, that's not really, that's not the program we signed up for you're leading us on. It's pretty special. I think that's that moment when as the founder, I realized, oh my gosh, this is so much bigger than me. Bar 3 and the philosophy of Bar 3 and the

values of bar three is separate from me. And it's something now instead of me being bar three, my job is to protect it, you know, to be like mama tiger around that. And to be, I get this privilege to be the voice of so many people that resonate with what we're doing. That's my job, is to listen to them and reflect them versus having them follow me. And that was that was a big turning point, that's when I changed as a leader and had a recognition of, oh, that, you know, that's my gift, that's my wisdom, is I can now, because I started with it all being about me, frankly, like I'm scratching my own niche, trying to solve my own problem. And then it turned to know, I'm going to observe these clients and make sure that we're evolving to meet their needs

and be the voice of a counter-narrative in the industry for women to stand up in our body. be proud of our bodies, honor our bodies, and, you know, yeah, kick ass and get results, but do it in a way that's dignified and sophisticated. Well, just thinking about you for a second as this amazing entrepreneur and CEO, you have the two titles of founder and CEO, which are, they're often paired and they're often said in a somewhat synonymous way, but they're actually two different roles. roles. And I can imagine especially for the bar three community and how you think about pushing the vision of bar three at times they feel maybe like different roles. Do you do you sort of

recognize that distinction as you're managing the company? That's a really, really good question. And so true. I identify more as a founder than I do as CEO. But as soon as I say that, I also want to stand up for all the other CEOs that are doing things differently. So I have a woman, Anna Martins, who is our C-O of the company, and she's really running the day-to-day. And then three leaders, along with her, along her side, report directly into me and Chris. So the four of them really run Bar three in the day-to-day. I do serve as more the visionary looking into like Y-Bar-3, reminding everybody of Y-Bar-Bar-3 and where we can take this great thing, this great platform. I'm really good at influencing that excitement around our future and our growth.

So I think that's the role of a CEO, and that's where I play in the most standing on stages, talking on podcasts, you know, approving this, you know, partnerships like, whoop. Like, you know, those kinds of things are, I think, more CEO. But where I am most proud is to be a founder because, and an owner, a business owner, because that's what we do. We sell franchising. We, you know, I'm a company of founders in a way, like all of us women who have invested our life savings and, and are emotional and intellect into this company. It's like a whole company of entrepreneurs and founders. So I think that's why that side of what I do is even more important as a franchisor, is to remember that I'm a founder and an owner and what that's like. Do you think it's a much harder path to be a female CEO in this era? Or do you feel like

that is something that's gained a lot of momentum in the last decade or so? And now to the point where it's something where there's almost an equal or more level of empowerment that comes with it. I think being a woman CEO is definitely celebrated on the outside. But I don't think it's really recognized by investors quite as much. When we have gone out, we went out in 2020 to just kind of see if we wanted to raise money for the first time ever. We've grown on cash flow for 16 years. We have no institutional outside investment. because I really enjoy making all my own decisions for the company and our purpose and values. That's the main reason. And then I built this company

of women. So I've never felt like I was the only woman in the room, quite the opposite. It's almost all women and a few men. So, but when we went out to the outside world, I literally had an investor say, and at the time we had a male leader as our COO, say the reason he would invest was because of him. And he'd only, been with us for maybe a year. So that kind of judgment or constraint is still real, sadly. But luckily, I just have sort of protected myself from it because of my choices of how we've grown as an organization. I think we have a lot. We have room to grow when it comes to women's CEOs. Well, look, you've helped pave the way. And obviously, you're setting an amazing

example. As we close here, what are you looking forward to about the WOOP bar three partnership? Number one, I'm really looking forward to encouraging our clients to level up their body wisdom. You know, we're doing this for our clients. Anything we can do to enhance our philosophy and our approach to body wisdom. And our mission statement is to teach people to be balanced in body and empowered from within. And in my direct experience using the loop, it's helped me become empowered from within. It's helped me balance my body and my life.

That is a total value fit for us. So I'm excited to, in the next year, so hear from clients, we're starting to survey clients more and really get to know them, how the loop has helped them, you know, and enhance their bar three practice and enhanced their lives as busy,

amazing butt kicking women out in the world, mostly women. So yeah, yeah, we're excited. Awesome partnership. Well, we're stoked too. We've added a new activity in the app for bar three. And look, we hope it's going to be a great opportunity for our members to discover your practice and vice versa for everyone who's doing bar three, hopefully to better understand the other 23 hours of the day too. Yes, I love it. I love it. It's been a real pleasure to be on your podcast and, you know,

everybody who's listening to get to know them at least this way. And thank you so much. Thank you, Sadie. I really enjoyed this. Big thank you to Sadie Lincoln for joining me on the show today. We are thrilled to work closely with Sadie and her team throughout our partnership with bar three. If you enjoy this episode of the Wu podcast, be sure to leave a rating or review.

Check us out on social at whoop at Will Ahmed. If you have a question, you want to answer it on the podcast, email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. You can try Whoop for free. That is at whoop.com, free 30-day trial. Also, new members can use the code Will, W-I-L, and get a $60 credit on WOOP accessories. That's a wrap, folks.

Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the Woop podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green. Thank you.