It’s been a year since the infamous “Peloton Wife” commercial went viral. This week on The Clip Out, we sit down with the star of that ad campaign, Monica Ruiz, for an exclusive interview. Her first in almost a year! She talks about landing the job, how the commercial impacted her life, partnering with Ryan Reynolds’ Aviation Gin, and finally getting a Peloton in real life and loving it.

Peloton sued for lack of closed captioning.

Mad Dogg Athletics sues Peloton.

New class types – Pilates and Prenatal.

We discuss Echelon’s high-end bike.

Apple Fitness+ partners with Schwinn.

Peloton added to the NASDAQ 100.

What Peloton & Pornhub have in common with Facebook.

Dr. Jenn – Starting the new year right.

Two new German instructors have been announced.

Peloton opens a new store in the UK.

CNBC reviews Apple Fitness+.

Podium aims to be the Canadian Peloton.

John Foley was featured in the New York Times.

Sam Yo used to be a Buddhist Monk.

Tonal now offers Guided Workouts.

Peloton has a new Shonda Rhimes collaboration.

DJ John Michael talks about his baldness.

Rebecca Kennedy has a 12-Day Fitness Challenge.

Emma Lovewell shows off her new product line on Instagram.

December will see four new Family Fit classes.

There’s a new Artist Series featuring Elvis.

All this plus our interview with The Peloton Wife, Monica Ruiz!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – Monica Ruiz (The Peloton Wife) One Year Later

We have big interview this week with Monica Ruiz. You might remember her from the big commercial that went viral. All anybody was talking about before COVID was the Peloton commercial from 2019, where it appeared within the commercial, perhaps the husband had bought the bike without asking her. Here’s a cool thing. I don’t think either of us realized it until during the interview, you’ll hear us figure this out in real time. She had not done another interview since the Today show.

I was very surprised by that when she mentioned it, I was like, “I just assumed there were other interviews.”

She would have made the rounds. Everybody was knocking at her door.

Also because we heard about it so much, it felt like she was out there, but she wasn’t. It’s great to hear her point of view on how she feels about the whole thing, and also how she felt about the fact that it felt like other people were talking for her. She’s very open. It’s a great interview.

It’s her first full-length interview about the entire subject, because the one that she gave to the Today show was in conjunction with Ryan Reynolds as part of the Aviation Gin thing. This is her first real sit-down.

Also, she’s one of us now, she rides.

She’s doesn’t just play one on TV.

Update, I talked to her. She hurt her toe getting off of her bike. Somebody had told her to plug it into an ethernet cord, so she hurt her toe. It might be broken. That will play into the conversation later.

That’s the big interview for the week. It’s a pretty fascinating interview, especially to what that did to her life. Before we get to all that, what else do you have in store for people this week?

We’re going to talk about yet another lawsuit.

Two yet another lawsuits.

We have both on the schedule this week?

We do.

Focus on the process over the outcome and have your goals be adjustable. Click To Tweet

Two more lawsuits, that will be fun. We’re going to talk about Pilates dropping. We’re going to talk about Apple Fitness. We’re going to talk to John Mills about what is going on with the stock market and competitors. We are going to talk about porn and how it relates to Peloton and a whole bunch of stuff going on with the instructor. There are lots of great stuff.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us, until they decide to take us down off of Apple. While you can, be sure and subscribe, so you never miss an episode. You can also leave us a review, that would be very helpful. We have a new review. This is from SpyVsSpy Leaderboard.

I recognize that. I can’t put a name with it right now, but I definitely recognize the leaderboard name.

I’m assuming that her grandfather created Spy Vs Spy from that magazine?

Yes. Did you already read this review?

No, I made a reference to Mad Magazine and she sent you a message through the Facebook about like, “Tell Tom,” which is really cool. She says, “Fantastic Laugh. Hilarious and informative for Peloton fans. I listen to this podcast when I need something light and easy. Crystal’s laugh is amazing. I also really respect that they use their platform to speak up for the right way to advocate as a business for BLM. Kudos.” That’s very kind of you.

Thank you. We don’t get much of that kind of feedback.

If you would like to leave a review, we would love to hear it most likely. You can do that over on iTunes. We have a Facebook page, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Also don’t forget our YouTube channel, if you’d be so kind as to run over there and subscribe, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. All of these episodes live there in full video so you can see the pictures and articles and stuff that we’re talking about as we talk about them. You can also see the faces that I get Crystal to make when I say horribly offensive things. There’s all of that, let’s dig in, shall we?

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The headline from TMZ, Peloton Sued, Deaf Folks Need More Guidance. Do we still say deaf?

We do not. TMZ can do what they want, but as a podcast, we do not. We say hearing impaired, but you know TMZ, they’re not so woke. They’re out calling other people out. They could work on their headlines. My guess is it was better for SEO.

It’s also a shorter headline, “hearing impaired is really long.” It will make it difficult to construct a headline that does just read, “Hearing impaired.” That community is upset that there is not closed captioning on the Peloton video.

Did you read this article?

I only read TMZ when somebody dies.

The reason I was asking if you actually read it is because I don’t think it’s these folks. I think it’s like this person. The reason that I mentioned that is because I saw a lot of feedback. I am not a hearing-impaired person, and I don’t use the app, but this lawsuit was specific toward the app. It was not about the bike because there are closed captions on the bike. This is only from what I read because again I do not use the app. I was told there are closed captions on the app. I don’t know if it’s just some classes, because I think when Peloton started adding close caption, they did not go back in their entire library and redo them.

They’re like, “From this point forward, we’re going to do it.”

I don’t know if this is a case of it doesn’t work on all apps, like for example, on Android app, which is so lacking. Maybe it’s not that, maybe it’s the classes that this person was taking, or maybe I was misinformed. All of those could be the case, but I am just reporting what I was told.

They do mention three specific classes: the 10-minute Arm Toning, 10-minute Stretching and 3-minute Warmup.

Do they have dates on those at all?

They do not.

I was just curious. It’s not like any of those are like Barre classes or brand-new things that just showed up. Having said that, I cannot remember when the floor strength started as its own thing, separate from the bike. They had classes whenever I first got the Peloton that were on the floor, but they’ve did a facelift on that. Without getting into it and looking, I don’t know. I’d have to go look at those specific classes. Even if that’s the case, really we’re suing over three classes?

Those are probably the easiest ones. They can’t just say in general you don’t. I’m sure they have to have some specificity about which classes don’t have it.

My point is when you list more than three, if that were the case, the reason I say that is because back when we had the music publishing thing, they literally listed out 20,000 songs.

The lawyers are incentivized to list as many artists and infractions as possible. Where I think in this case, it’s not so much. The music thing, if they can list the potential financial gains are radically different if there are two artists whose songs got used inappropriately, versus if there are 200 artists whose songs that were used inappropriately. Also, I guess if you hit three classes and they’re not working, how much longer are you going to dig around in there?

I don’t know. I think back objectively when we talked to Kristin Fleschner, who is blind. She talked to us about how Peloton could be more accessible. She was looking at it from the standpoint all accessibility, no matter what kind of impairment you have. She talked a lot about the fact that they didn’t have settings on their Android tablet, that would make it easier for people who were vision impaired. The reason I say that is because they had closed captioning before they turned those settings on. To find a class, choose a class, etc. that would be so much easier to do if you could see but you couldn’t hear. I would think there are options because I think you can turn close captions on and off. I know you can do that on the bike, maybe you can’t do that on the app. My point being, I’m surprised that Peloton has not been sued by the vision impaired community, because it seems like there are many things that are lacking from a vision standpoint as compared to auditory.

I will also point out that none of these classes involve equipment.

That might be why they focused on the app portion of it. They’re not talking about, “This is the bike, this is the app,” and maybe that’s because this person is a digital member only.

I also wonder if maybe some of it is Peloton is so focused on getting the tread classes and the bike classes up to speed that they didn’t even necessarily think about stretching or toning. I don’t know if they view those differently internally in some capacities.

That’s a great point. I don’t take classes on the app, so I don’t know. Those are all good questions.

While we’re talking about lawsuits, Mad Dogg Athletics.

You remember these guys, right?

No, I don’t. I’m very familiar with their line of alcohol.

No. This is the company that has the copyright for the word ‘spin.’ When we interviewed Michelle Brookman for Pedal on the Pier, do you remember that they sued them for having the word ‘spin’ in there? Other people chimed in on our group and talked about how there was the word spin in a Facebook group and the owner of Mad Dogg called them on the phone and told them to remove the word from the group. They have the right, don’t get me wrong.

They probably have to actually be extra vigilant because spin has become so popular. It’s synonymous to where if it starts to get used as the colloquial expression, you can lose your copyright. For instance, Xerox has not lost theirs, but I believe I think was linoleum. Linoleum was a brand that they lost it, but there have been brands over the years who have lost their copyright. Most people won’t say tissue, they’ll say Kleenex. They have to be almost extra vigilant because it’s bordering on entering the public domain because they are so popular and that they become the default word for it.

There are several interesting things here. One of the interesting things is that this company actually filed for bankruptcy last year 2019. Think about those two sentences. They filed for bankruptcy last year 2019 and ‘spin’ is the most popular it’s ever been. Why did it take them? How many years since 2014 for them to claim that Peloton took all of their patents?

Do we know when they entered bankruptcy, did they change hands?

We do not.

I’m not saying this is what they’re doing, but the article reads to me like a classic patent troll thing. I almost wonder if when they entered bankruptcy, somebody bought them up with the sole purpose of going after and suing all these people that are now doing it.

I wonder if they work for Echelon.

I think if that was the case, it would be owned by Echelon. There’s a big problem with patent trolls in the world. For a while, there was talk that podcasts might go away because there was somebody that was saying that they invented the “concept” of a podcast. Their concept of a podcast was like, “I’m going to talk on a cassette tape and mail it to somebody.”

They did not come up with that. When people did that in the 1980s, that’s a thing.

The company is saying that they did it in the ‘80s and that this is a version of that, so they were going around sending all these letters basically saying, “Send us a bunch of money or we’re going to shut you down.” They went after like Marc Maron and Adam Carolla. I think it was Adam Carolla who was like, “No, I’m going to spend a bunch of money and fight back instead of sending you a check.” The podcasters ended up winning. This sounds like that because they’re like, “We had something like this a long time ago before it was really possible.” As I was reading this, that’s how it read to me.

We will keep an eye on it. We have a patent attorney in our group who is going to keep tabs on this, dig into this a little deeper and let us know what’s going on.

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There were two big announcements this week in regards to new classes. We now have Pilates.

This was actually brought up by that Bob Treemore guy on Twitter. He did something on the backend of Peloton.

He goes and looks under the hood and check oil.

I don’t know what magic he does, but he saw Pilates had been added. He mentioned that, then before we could talk about it, here it is. Pilates has dropped today. There were twenty new classes that dropped. They’re all on-demand. We have four different instructors. There’s Hannah Corbin, Sam Yo, that’s interesting I thought because he’s from the UK. Then we have Kristin McGee and Aditi Shah. They are the beginning instructors. In the email that came out after that, it said there were going to be more instructors added. I assume more content is definitely coming. That is important to note because Barre classes were dropped and tried it to see what kind of feedback they got from people. When they did, they had only dropped the ten classes. No more have been dropped and it’s been six months. They’re planning on bringing them back in March. More Barre classes will be dropping in March 2021. I got the impression from the email it’s not going to be that long for Pilates. There’s more coming on a quicker basis. When you’re doing Pilates, you don’t need an hour-long class. It’s hitting all of your core. It’s not like you need an hour class to your core. Also I want to mention for anybody out there, this does not require equipment. There’s Pilates that you can do with a Pilates reformer, not necessary. These are all without equipment, just like the Barre classes. That’s important for people who might be wondering about that.

While we’re talking about new classes, they launched prenatal program.

They have not officially launched it. I believe they’re officially launching it on Friday. However, this article came out because there are going to be episodes hitting YouTube first. Robin is pregnant, she is going to be doing a full prenatal, and once she has her baby, postnatal program. These are done in a docu series type of thing for YouTube. There will also be classes on Peloton. Somebody said it was going to be Friday. When I read through here, I did not see that other than they were dropping on YouTube on Friday. I didn’t get time to dig into this as much as I wanted. There’s a lot going on.

It’s interesting that they’re launching them on YouTube.

I thought so too. I think it might be because it’s more of a docu series. Also Robin has been doing her own YouTube show, her IG show. There’s a whole bunch of things that she’s been doing. I don’t know if that’s why, I don’t know if it’s because it’s time-sensitive. She’s going to have her baby soon. I’m not really clear what that’s about, but I have a feeling we’ll find out later.

It’s also a great way to get in front of a different audience, and maybe get people to sample Peloton if they don’t want to pull the trigger on the app, there are these classes over there. They can check it out and then maybe go, “You got me.”

That’s a good point. I have no idea, that’s interesting.

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 This has been rumored for a while, but we finally get the confirmation about new instructors.

New instructors for Germany specifically. We knew about Cliff. We had figured that one out, however we did not have Mayla. Brand new instructors, they just dropped classes in Germany. It’s German classes. I am being told that Cliff’s classes, more people have seen. I’m getting comments about those. I don’t know if it’s like how they dropped them, but apparently his English is perfect based on what people have seen. There have been questions like, “Was he born in Germany? Was he born in America? Is he German or is he just learned English at an early age?” Regardless, we welcome them to the Peloton family. The other thing is this is interesting because we also know that Bradley Rose is coming on board soon.

We talked about that last time, that Bob Treemore broke that story.

I’ve seen conflicting reports about whether or not he’s going to be teaching for the UK and the US because he is from the UK, but he teaches in the US, so this will be interesting. For people out there who are feeling like, “This is frustrating that they’re adding all these German classes because they’re not all translated to English,” keep in mind that we have thousands of classes more to choose from than they do German classes. It’s very cool that they are added and I can’t wait to get a chance to experience those classes. I know I’ve really enjoyed taking classes with Irene. She’s one of the German instructors and she is a little fireball. She’s funny, I love her sense of humor.

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Welcome back to the show, Dr. Jenn Mann. She is a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist, and sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn or her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She’s also a five-year national team member in rhythmic gymnastics and sports psychology for USA gymnastics. Dr. Jenn, that’s a lot. Where do you find time for us?

I love talking Peloton. I always have time for you guys. It’s my obsession. I should be paying you.

The New Year 2021 is upon us. I want to say, “It can’t be worse than 2020,” but I don’t want to issue any challenges to 2021. A lot of people make new fitness commitments as the year changes. We’re wondering what tips you might have for how to start the new year right.

I recommend a few things. First of all, this is something I do, I try to practice what I preach. I spent some time before the New Year where I sit down and I look at the different categories of goals because it’s not just fitness. If we only make fitness goals, it leaves us not well-balanced. It’s important to make career, work, family or relationship goals. Oftentimes, people take for granted like, “My relation is functioning well. I don’t need to make any relationship goals.” How could you up your game? How can you be a better partner? How can you communicate better? How can you be better in bed? What can you do to up your game?

It’s important to look at the different categories of your life and go, “Let’s make some goals.” It’s also important to make process-oriented goals as opposed to endpoint type of goals. The typical New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, but you can’t control how your body responds to the choices you make. What you can control is the choices you make, how often you work out, that you eat fruits and vegetables. I’m also a bigger fan of saying, “This is what I am going to do as opposed to what I’m not going to do. I’m going to try to eat green, leafy vegetables every day. I’m going to replace my coconut oil with olive oil.” To do that instead of, “I’m not going to eat any sweets,” which is not realistic, not healthy and not well-balanced. It’s going to leave you feeling deprived and you’re probably going to binge in the end.

Making sure that your goals are not extreme and realistic. I like small manageable goals because what happens when you make small manageable goals is that you achieve them and then you build on them. It changes your perception of yourself. If you’re someone who hasn’t succeeded in the past, if you say, “I’m going to do a ten-minute Peloton class three days a week,” you’re probably going to achieve that. You also have built it, “I missed it. I was planning to do it Monday, but there was a crisis at the office and I had to work on this project. I’m going to be able to do it Tuesday.” It gives you a little leeway. Focusing on the process over the outcome, small manageable goals and also have your goals be adjustable. It’s not like, “I’m going to work out seven days a week,” instead, “I’m going to do three days. I’m going to evaluate after I’ve done three days a week for three months, then I’m going to see what I can build on.” I’m a big fan of buildable goals.

I hear a lot about SMART goals and I never hear about adjustments.

It’s important to be able to adjust. That wasn’t realistic. Instead of saying, “I’m a failure. I can’t meet my goals.” Say, “I’m going to adjust that goal so that I can make it more realistic for the reality of how my life has changed in a pandemic or how my career has changed or how my kids’ needs have changed now that they’re home doing Zoom school.” Those are big factors. I also like for people to create a mantra for the New Year. I create a mantra every year and I put it up on my office’s bulletin board, both in my home office. When I was at my regular office before the pandemic, I have it there. I keep a paper planner. I put it in my planner.

I try to keep it someplace where I can see. Whatever the mantra is, it should be something that helps you to think differently. It should be something that looks at what your biggest challenges have been in terms of your thinking patterns and helps you to shift them. Also, it even gives you a script to some degree on how to respond to yourself. Let’s say you’re someone who says, “I can’t do it.” That you’re negative on yourself. What you want to do is make a goal to say, “I’m going to be more positive,” that’s way too big. To say something like, “Every time I say something negative to myself, I am going to come back with three positive statements in order to inoculate that negative statement.”

You may want to put in your mantra what three examples might be of that just so that you have it visually and you see it on a regular basis. You want to put this where you can see it on a day-to-day basis because we’re retraining our brain. We don’t think about our brains as trainable as our bodies are. If you’re someone who reads this show, you’re someone who is athletic, you’re into Peloton, Tonal or fitness, or into bettering yourself in some way, but a lot of the time we don’t think of our brains as trainable. We have a lot of negative thinking habits from our childhood, the crappy teachers that we’ve had, the coaches who were critical, our grandparents, the bullies at school or whoever it is that gave you a lot of negative feedback that we’ve internalized, but it’s up to us to train our brain to think differently. When it comes to a new year, new resolutions and new goal-setting, this is an important part of that as well.

It’s smart too when you were saying about the negative and positive to have some positive things locked and loaded because when you get in that negative mindset, it’s hard to think of positive things. I don’t want to name any names because I would hate to embarrass Crystal, but you get in that spiral, so to have them at the ready, you’d be like, “Here are some things.”

It’s funny because you point that out to me all the time and I don’t catch it in myself. I see Brian do that, my stepson who’s sixteen. I’ll be like, “You’re in a negative spiral.” It’s easier for me to see it when he does it. He reminds me to work on it for myself. That’s a great idea as well.

I am someone who can get very overwhelmed by new technology. I’m probably one of the only people you’ll meet who don’t like a new phone or a new computer or a new car. I don’t like any of that.

You are easy to shop for.

I’m not into technology. For me, that was one of the things that I did a deep dive. I was like, “That’s holding me back.” One of my mantras had to do with that. Any time I’m faced with new technology, my response would be, “I can’t wait to learn that. I’m excited to learn how to do that.” Instead of that fear response of, “I can’t do that. This is going to stop me. I can’t move forward on that,” my response became, “I can’t wait to learn that. I’m going to conquer that.” Having it up on my bulletin board, seeing it every day changed how I responded to it, which had a positive trickle-down effect.

Thank you. Until next time. Where can people find you?

On social media, @DrJennMann.

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This is where we would normally talk to John Mills. Unfortunately, we fired him.

No, never. There was no firing. Can you fire somebody that volunteers to talk to you?

Our recording time didn’t meet up with his, so we did not get to meet up this week. No John Mills this week, but do not fear. He will return when we return after the first of the year. Something we were going to talk to him about some stuff that he put on his Facebook group, Run, Lift & Live, about how Echelon launched a new high-end bike, which is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Whatever the mantra is, it should be something that helps you to think differently. Click To Tweet

Peloton was here first, obviously. Echelon came around and said, “You don’t need to pay all that money for that bike.” That’s their big thing is how expensive Peloton is. I know you guys are asking, “How much is this bike?” It’s $2,039.98. I don’t know why it’s such a weird number, but it is. It doesn’t even start shipping until December 28th, but they’re trying to make it like, “If you can’t get a Peloton until February, this is your deal. This is better for Christmas.”

You still won’t have a bike to open on Christmas.

Yeah, but I guess it’s sooner. I don’t know what they’re thinking. I don’t understand Echelon. It has a rotating 22-inch screen, a center audio jack, front-facing speakers, dual power ports in the front and the back, cranks and bearings that are competition level, gel comfort seat, a coated metal water and a bottle holder. That’s all the features. It has a lot of features. I feel like it’s a bait and switch. I feel like everything they do is very inconsistent, “Don’t buy a Peloton, buy Echelon because we’re cheaper, but we’re going to go ahead and come out with this expensive bike that does all the same things that Peloton does.” What are we doing?

I don’t get who would go this route, but I guess someone must be.

There are a lot of people in John’s Run, Lift & Live group that are saying things and Jacqui Cincotta mentions this a lot. She knows people specifically that have canceled their Peloton orders because they’re taking too long and they’re buying Echelons.

When you decide to finally break down and get the Peloton, you will have spent less money on an Echelon. It’s an easier bike to throw away.

You can still use Peloton content, especially those cheap ones. They’re cheaply made, you can see how they’re shaking back and forth. I have no idea what this one will be at, who knows? When you’re paying $400 for something and that’s their selling point, how cheap they are, I don’t get what they’re trying to do.

It would be like if Hyundai was trying to go after the Lexus market. That’s not what Hyundai does.

I feel like they’re scattered. I feel like eight people are running that company, and they’re all like, “Go, go, go.” There’s no cohesive movement. As a project manager, it drives me insane. Can you imagine what their project plans must look like? They must chaos. There’s nobody in control over there.

John also talked about Apple Fitness+.

They got it Launched on Monday. That’s a whole thing we’re going to get more into later, but go ahead.

They are partnering up with Schwinn for the indoor cycling brand, which is owned by Nautilus.

When you say partnering up, I’m going to be very specific. The way it works is when you go to the Apple Fitness, it recommends the Schwinn bike. It’s right in there, “Buy here,” that’s what he’s saying by partnering. They do the same thing with a tread, they do some tech something. We’ve talked about that other company before, but it’s their really expensive top of the line, like $15,000 tread. They do the same thing. To the point, John asked the question and I think it’s a fair question. Does this mean that Apple and Nautilus are partnering up against Peloton?

You’ve got to wonder.

Another thing that happened is that Apple is giving free memberships to Apple Fitness. If you’re a Lifetime Fitness member, you can now get Apple Fitness+ membership for free.

That’s interesting especially if there’s probably a good chance your gym is closed. That’s a smart move.

I don’t know if you want me to go into my feelings on Apple Fitness now, or do you want to do that later?

We’re going to talk about a review that CNBC did with them a little bit later, so we’ll save that.

We were going to talk about Peloton got added last week to the NASDAQ.

The NASDAQ 100 index, which is a big deal. This is the way I understand that. They pick 100 stocks that represent the NASDAQ, so when they’re gauging how the NASDAQ is doing, it’s an amalgam of how those 100 stocks are doing that. It’s like the S&P 500 list.

All the words disappeared out of my brain at the same time. I have no idea what happened. That is exactly what it is. That’s cool for Peloton to have been added to that, especially a year after they started.

It also tells you what the financial industry thinks of Peloton when people are like, “It’s a fad, it’s going to go away.” When they’re added to the NASDAQ 100, that tends to make you think that they don’t think it’s going to go away.

I also thought it was interesting because in general, Peloton has been up really high this week. At first, they dropped with the whole Apple Fitness introduction, and then they rebounded. They have been soaring. I actually have no idea because it’s never been better news with COVID. Don’t get me wrong, more people than ever are dying. I don’t mean that.

We’re seeing progress with the vaccine. The Moderna one is about to get approved, so now we’ll have two vaccines.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re far from the end, but there’s light. I don’t really get what’s going on. It was at 133 today, that’s insane.

On a very different note, we came across this article, What PornHub and Peloton have in common with Facebook. Anytime it’s got porn in the headline, I’m like, “Let’s talk about that one.”

The funny thing is this was actually on our radar from two weeks ago, and somehow we did not talk about it last week. I’m sure it is my fault. I put the list together, but it wasn’t on purpose because I’m curious to hear what you think that Peloton and PornHub have in common.

This article specifically is about what Peloton and PornHub have in common with Facebook, which is about content moderation about how Facebook is having so much trouble and that it would never have user generated content, because PornHub has user generated content and you can upload stuff. From what I’ve read, they had to pull a bunch of videos. They had to delete them because anyone can upload a video, so there was a lot of revenge porn, underage stuff on there, not tons, but there was some, and there was some voyeur stuff where it was not fake. They had to pull a bunch of that stuff. Peloton has had their own issues with the user generated content in terms of the leaderboard names and the hashtags. It was talking about that sort of stuff, but what it will be like for companies and why that’s something pretty much any company, even if you think you don’t need to worry about it, you need to worry about it.

It sounds like we’ve covered that then.

I thought the article was about what Peloton and PornHub have in common but it didn’t do that, so I made my own list of what Peloton and PornHub have in common. I have eight things that Peloton and PornHub have in common. Coming in at number eight, depending on how you use it, your butt may be sore. Number seven, your results are determined by cadence and resistance. Number six, unless she specifically asks, do not get your wife a subscription. Number five, your floor may get wet. Number four, it’s always fun to see somebody you know. Number three, no matter how hard you try, you’ll never top the leaderboard. Number two, it can cause change. Finally number one, the most in common thing that PornHub and Peloton have, you do you.

We need an applause there. It’s very nice.

Thank you. It is a little something I worked on in my spare time. We saw a story that Peloton is opening another store in the United Kingdom.

They’ve actually opened up quite a few and I keep forgetting to add that, not UK, but adding stores lately because there have been so many. They’re over 100 stores worldwide now. This is going to be in the Bath City Centre. It’s coming. They don’t have a date yet, but it’s going to happen February or March. That’s cool and exciting.

Now, we can talk about the Apple Fitness+ review that CNBC did.

I have a very open mind. I came into this article with a very open mind and I was like, “Okay.” The article says, “It’s just as good as Peloton.” If you read the article, it goes on to say it’s not. I don’t understand that. Was that for clicks? Was that to drive people like me mad? What are we trying to do here? They talk about price. Peloton, if we’re talking digital only, is a little more expensive at $1,299 versus $999 for Apple. There are more kinds of classes, more disciplines that you can take, not by much but there are a couple. This one it’s Rowing that stands out that Peloton doesn’t have. Where it goes down from there are the things like to see your activity. You have to have an Apple Watch. That’s how you’re able to track what’s going on the screen like how many calories you’ve burned, what your heart rate is, you’ve got to have an Apple Watch. You can still take the class without an Apple Watch, but it doesn’t connect with any of your fitness metrics. I decided to try a Yoga class because it was my yoga day. When I took the class, I will say the content is fine. It’s not amazing, it’s not awful. It was fine.

I did like about how Apple slowed down the yoga and told you very carefully how to make the transitions. Peloton goes pretty fast, especially on their intermediate classes. However, I will also say there is no differentiator on the Apple Fitness to say this is a beginner. If you’re a person who knows all the moves, that’s going to irritate the crap out of you. A twenty-minute class, we did three moves. That’s not very much. It was fine for me, but for somebody who wants a serious yoga workout, that’s not going to do it. Don’t get me wrong, they’re going to be able to find it like how much time do you have to spend looking for it? I will tell you the biggest thing that irritated me with this, and maybe it will change, I don’t know. They do not have the ability to cast this unless you have an Apple TV. I don’t mean the Apple TV app, that’s not good enough. You have to have an actual Apple TV airplay, which is their thing. It doesn’t work. How stupid is that? I can airplay many things, but you can’t airplay their own app.

I think that’s also fascinating for the people that are like, “I don’t have to buy a bike,” but for full functionality, you have to buy a watch and a television.

Or take it on this little tiny screen. I did a yoga class on a freaking phone. Don’t do that, it was terrible. The other weird thing about it, this blew my mind, it will let you cast the music. The sound will come through my TV, but not the picture.

That’s really frustrating. It’s like their way of saying, “We could if we wanted to but we don’t want to.”

I don’t even hate Apple, but this is the kind of crap that ticks people like me off, especially coming from Android. You should not have to be in the Apple zone. Don’t complain to me about the price of a $2,000 bike when you’ve gotten to buy $1,000 television to be able to see a yoga class. Anyway, it was fine. I will also say I’ve only taken one yoga class. John Mills posted a clip of a preview of a Spin class, and it was awful. It wasn’t quite peanut butter and jelly level, but the cheese factor, there was some heavy cheese. Some people are reporting they have taken Rowing classes and other classes, and they enjoyed them. They like that you could see your metrics on the screen. They had an Apple TV though. I guess it depends on your setup. People think that this is going to be some huge thing for Peloton. I don’t think that’s the case. If they leave it the way it is right now, I don’t think Peloton has a problem. They make tons and tons of changes, maybe we’ll see.

Or try to come out with their own line of equipment.

That’s a different story. I don’t think that they will, based on the fact that they were pushing people to these other specific equipment.

I would tend to agree. If they’re pushing people towards other equipment, then that says that they do not have any immediate plans to launch a line of equipment.

One more thing on this. I noticed that John Foley also sold a bunch of Peloton shares. Apparently, it was about a hundred thousand shares that he sold. If I am reading this correctly, it is $12 million. That’s a profit that he made.

Good for him. I would read nothing into that.

I think that’s a good thing. I think that means that he’s very happy with what that stock is doing.

Some people, whenever they hear somebody selling stock, they think it means that like, “They’re leaving there and abandon the company.” It’s profit taking. It was at $135 or $136 today. To me, it shows a great deal of restrain.

It’s the second time it’s been up this high.

Good for him.

Congrats.

—

Canada’s getting their own Peloton version.

Did you see who they’re teaming Apple with?

I did, it’s one more reason for you to not like Echelon. It’s Spinco, which is Canada’s largest spin studio, but for the bike manufacturing, they have partnered up with Echelon.

Now, they have a new piece of equipment called Podium. How many pieces of equipment do they need?

They seem stretched very thin.

Remember what I was saying? It’s scattershot. It’s driving me insane. It’s either going to be enormously successful of them to do that or enormously bad. I have no idea which, but at any rate, go check it out.

—

John Foley was featured in the New York Times.

This article was one of those feel-good pieces like, “How does John Foley spend his Sundays?” Ironically, the tagline is, “A year ago Peloton was the butt of a holiday joke. Not anymore.” Then they made one out of him. Here’s the thing, he talks about how he spends Sundays. People focused on two things that irritated people or they found it. I don’t even know it was offensive to people. One of the things is that he has his tread in his downstairs bathroom. That’s the only place that he has for it. He literally runs in the mornings in one of his downstairs bathroom. When you see the picture of it, it doesn’t look like the bathroom is that ginormous, but it’s Manhattan. He has a downstairs in his apartment and he has a bathroom in Manhattan big enough to put a tread in.

He’s also the CEO and Founder of Peloton.

The other thing that people really focused on was how the first thing he does is drink 40 sips of water from his hand at the upstairs bathroom sink. He says, “It’s efficient. I drink until I feel like I’m going to throw up water every day.” John, what are we doing? Everyone’s like, “We need to get him a water bottle.” There were entire articles written about John needing a water bottle.

 

Peloton has lots. Even I have a Peloton water bottle. They’re handing them out and I’m like, “I got a Peloton water bottle now.” It’s weird to think that I have a Peloton water bottle, but the CEO of the company does not.

I’m sure he has one, he just doesn’t use it first thing in the morning. He’s got a thing. I don’t know why. I feel bad that he got picked on though.

While we’re talking about Peloton in the news.

Instructor Sam Yo was in People Magazine. Sam clearly has a fascinating past. How many people can say that they have both been a Buddhist monk and a Peloton instructor?

I would think that Venn Diagram is just a big, giant circle.

Apparently, there’s a tiny sliver and Sam was in it. He talks about his entire story of how that occurred. He was an actor, literally was in the middle of a play and was like, “I’m going to go be a Buddhist monk.” He made a complete life change. He said it’s been one of the best things that ever happened to him. He was worried about how his family would take it. His parents were totally supportive. They were actually at his ceremony where you get officially recognized as a monk. He was only planning on spending a month or two at the monastery and ended up spending ten months there. He loved the solitude. He eventually came back and taught classes and was tapped by a Peloton, and here we are.

Tonal introduced Guided Workouts.

This adds a whole other level of awesomeness to the Tonal because now as you’re doing the workout, it shows you what the strength of your rep was, the range of motion and the power behind it. Let’s say you’re on the last rep of ten reps, and you’re struggling. You’ll be able to see the curve go down like your power isn’t there, your range of motion isn’t necessarily there. Why is this such a big deal? When you can see it, you can very clearly see what you need to change to be able to increase your strength score. Let’s say you’re at 8 pounds for a bicep curl. You’re like, “I’m not quite getting the range of motion I need on those last two reps. That’s why my strength hasn’t gone up in a while.” Now, you really focus on those last two reps, keep all of them above the 80% threshold, and before you know it, you’re going to increase your strength. That’s it, it’s a little button and you can see it. If you do your own workouts, you’ve always been able to see this information, but now they’ve also added if your strength score goes up while you’re doing it, you’re going to be able to see when your strength score goes up. You’re going to be able to see PR for your power. This is incredible that they made this change. This is huge.

They do such a great job of the metrics that they’re calculating, especially when they’re not looking at you.

It’s all without a camera. It’s amazing.

The commercial touched on a lot of things that people who already had bikes felt. Click To Tweet

It’s based on how the handle’s moving. It’s pretty fascinating what they can pull off. It’s Tonal, it’s the sleek at-home gym. It looks amazing. It’s a cool-looking device. You can try Tonal 30 days risk-free, visit www.Tonal.com for $100 off smart accessories when you use promo code, The Clip Out, at checkout.

Tonal, be your strongest.

Peloton announced that they have partnered up with Shonda Rhimes.

This is really cool. It’s another partnership that’s amazing. It’s going to be very similar to the Beyonce one, in that it’s not a one-time thing. This is going to be eight weeks. It’s called The Year of Yes. Shonda Rhimes is the spokesperson for this. There are going to be all these classes that you can take with the instructors over an eight-week period, but all will have the message of like, “Say yes, take risks. This is your year. You can do this.” If you happen to be watching our YouTube channel, we are showing an Instagram post. I encourage you also to go to the @OnePeloton Instagram and check out this video with Shonda Rhimes. She talks about how she became enamored with fitness and why Year of Yes happened. It’s great to hear her thoughts on that.

If you’re not familiar with Shonda Rhimes, because she’s a behind-the-scenes person, some people were like, “Who is Shonda Rhimes?” She created the show Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy. She’s a show runner and creative force behind those shows. I don’t know if she’s the official show runner on Grey’s anymore, but she still oversees it. It was her baby for the first 7 or 8 years. She signed a gigantic gazillion dollar deal with Netflix. Shonda Rhimes is a big damn deal. A lot of times, people don’t necessarily know the name because she’s behind the scenes. She’s not one of the stars of the show, but the show would not exist were it not for Shonda Rhimes.

She’s won a bunch of Emmys too.

We haven’t talked about DJ John Michael in a while, but he had an interesting Instagram post talking about his lack of hair. There’s nothing wrong with not having hair.

I thought you might identify with this. I thought that you might like to hear his thoughts on it. He became bald, lost his hair at an early age. He’s been wearing baseball caps since that happened. It’s his thing.

Baseball caps are the Gen X’s comb-over.

A lot of people do that. He heard about this guy who uses wigs to create hairstyles for people. He decided to give it a try. Then he posted on his Instagram the results of that and he looks amazing. It looks totally natural. I would not have guessed that was a wig. He wanted to be transparent about it.

He always wears a baseball hat to suddenly having this amazing hair, people are going to be like, “Why did you keep that under a baseball hat?”

Good for him for being brave enough to put that up. I don’t know what it’s like to be a man without hair, but I know if I, as a woman, didn’t have hair, I would be a mess.

Culturally, it’s a lot harder for a woman to lose her hair than it is for a man.

I still I feel bad because it’s just one of those things you can’t control.

 

There are things you can do about it but most of them don’t work. I wouldn’t want to do this just because it looks like a lot of work. If he wants to do it, more power to him. Personally, I’m too lazy. I can’t imagine if I put all the effort into that, but it won’t work out.

I don’t think it’s as bad as you think it is. I think it’s the first time you do it and then you maintain it and wash it. I don’t think it requires a whole bunch after that. I could be wrong.

I’ve gotten really accustomed to making a bottle of shampoo last months.

It’s actually pretty adorable.

Rebecca Kennedy has announced her 12 days of Workout Challenge.

Rebecca put this together. People had asked her for some strength program. What she did is she put together 12 days of Strength to keep people on track through the holidays. Every few days, she’s posting three days at a time, then she gives you a workout. You’re going to see Glutes and Legs, Arms and Shoulders, and then Dance cardio. That’s an example of day three. Each of them are twenty minutes. You spend an hour working out. It’s nothing crazy like if you ride the bike. That’s not something you can’t handle. I also want to mention that part of that challenge is for people who want to learn how to do handstands. She also has a bonus challenge too, for beginners and people who have already mastered handstands. She has workouts that you can add on. I thought that was pretty cool. You can find all that on her Instagram.

While we’re digging around the Gram, Emma Lovewell.

This video is amazing. Did you watch this video?

No.

Her transitions are freaking on-point. She has LIVE LEARN LOVEWELL, her brand, they did a new drop. There’s a whole bunch of clothing that dropped and it all has LOVEWELL on it. The video is amazing because she’s trying it all on, and she did the same dance as she tried on each piece, and it’s seamless. It looks expertly done. I’m jealous.

Four new Family Fit Classes are dropping each week in December 2020.

It’s perfect timing. This came later, but whenever they talked about Robin doing her prenatal and postnatal, they were like, “This is great timing because we’re also doing our Family Fit.” Peloton is bringing in the whole family at this point. These classes have been very popular since Jess Sims started them over the summer 2020 when we had all the COVID starting, kids are at home. People have loved them. Her and Kristin McGee have been producing more content. It might be fun to do while you’re hanging out with your family and not necessarily able to do all the traditional things you do for Christmas this year 2020, or whatever holiday you celebrate.

Finally, there is a new artist series. I always feel weird saying that “new artist series,” like it’s a new artist, but it’s an artist series that’s new.

This one in particular is an old artist.

They have an artist series with Elvis Presley. I know that’s very exciting for some people. I am not an Elvis guy.

I’m not either. I don’t dislike him, I just don’t love him.

I get it objectively, especially with where music was at when he started, there wasn’t really anything like that from white people. I get how groundbreaking he was for the genre, but it just doesn’t resonate with me at all. There are two Elvis songs where I dig that, then the rest of them I don’t. I know people love him.

This is another example of how Peloton is well-rounded with their artist series. Even though it’s not my thing, I’m glad. They shouldn’t all be my thing, just like with the clothes. It shouldn’t be something I love every time. It should be things that different people love because you want to hit somebody different in your audience each time. That’s the idea.

When somebody tries something to emulate Peloton and they miss the mark, but just a smidge but it feels like a mile, it’s not peanut butter and jelly that it should have been, it was peanut butter and banana.

They were so close.

I do think it’s cool that they’re doing that. This is the oldest artist that they featured.

I know Elvis was in the ‘60s, but he started in the ‘50s. Yes, he is the oldest artist.

Pretty much all we got left now is like a Scott Joplin artist series or Mozart or something. If they do a Scott Joplin one, they should sell you a Peloton where there’s a big, giant wheel on the front of the bike. If you dig Elvis, you should reach out to Peloton and say, “Thank you very much.”

—

Joining us now is Monica Ruiz. If you don’t recognize that name, you will definitely recognize her as a Peloton user. You’re colloquially referred to as the Peloton Wife.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for doing this. It’s been almost a year to the day, I think.

I didn’t even realize that it was to the day until my sister texted me like, “Someone tweeted, a year ago, this week, we were making fun of this woman. What did she know?” I was like, “It’s been a year. That’s funny.”

 

That’s why I was sweating, getting this interview done. I was like, “She’s going to keep pushing it off until it’s past the date and she will just forget about it.”

I feel like this has made me so much flakier. I’m in pajamas all day. I am not on the ball anymore.

COVID has changed the world. There’s no doubt about that.

I feel like we should say this, Monica is in her car because it’s quiet. She’s not homeless. Everything is okay.

She’s not driving.

My house happens to have a lot of things. There’s nowhere to go where my kids won’t try to figure out where I am. If they know that they don’t see me moving in and out of different rooms while they’re like hanging out, they’ll try to find me and make noise. I was like, “Let’s just play it safe.”

How old are your kids?

Two and four years old, who’s napping.

That’s a handful.

I’m assuming there’s a lead time on the production of that commercial, so you’re doing a fitness commercial inside a year of having a baby.

I was worried about it too because it all moved quickly as far as the audition, the callback, the booking, and then the shooting. I was like, “I don’t know if I’m in the shape to get my butt kicked on set because everyone kept warning me, ‘When they shoot these commercials, they kick your butt. It’s not just for show. They don’t just make you look sweaty. They will make you work out.” I was easing back into working out.

That’s interesting. I had no idea that was the case. For the rest of us who have never recorded commercials, how long does that process take? It’s not like one take. They’re doing it over and over.

We shot that one when I was there in Vancouver for a week. They were shooting multiple spots at once. I didn’t know what the spot was going to end up being. I thought that it was going to be like, “Here are some vignettes of this woman and this guy working out.” I didn’t realize it was going to be a commercial that was very centered on the story of this woman who received the bike. When it came out, I was like, “That was all about me. It is just my face.”

For about 45 minutes, you thought that was a good thing and then the internet got on them.

It was funny because it came on during every single commercial break for everything. It was on during sports, streaming, and Bravo shows. Every single person in the world who turns on a TV or a device to stream something saw it. That’s what made it easy to talk about because everyone had seen it. It wasn’t like the majority of people knew what it was. When people started joking about it, they were like, “I’ve seen that commercial too many times.”

What kind of timeline was there from the moment that the commercial is done and then it goes viral? How long from when you finished filming it to when it went viral? I think there is a gap.

We shot it in September or October, then it aired in late November because that’s usually when they start the Christmas commercials. It has been running for 2 to 3 weeks and all of a sudden, it was this huge explosion and I’m like, “What’s going on? This commercial has been out. I want to understand why is everybody starting to talk about it?

We talk about Peloton every weekend so when the commercial came out, there was a little bit of chatter in the Peloton world that mirrored what would become the national conversation about like, “Did he buy that bike for his wife without asking?”

It was more of a joke.

I remembered at the time, you were sticking up for the commercial and I was like, “They probably should have had a line in there.” That was it. There were 2 to 3 weeks of nothing and then all of a sudden. Kaboom.

What was it like when you woke up that day?

I was bringing my son to school. I used to know this guy because I used to bartend and there was a guy who bartended at a different place. He messaged me on Facebook. I deleted my Facebook since then, but I had it at the time and he goes, “Good morning, America,” or somebody tweeted, “Who is the Peloton woman?” I tweeted back at “Good morning, America.” He was like, “I know her. She’s Monica Ruiz.” I’m like, “No, why did you tell them?” I was hoping it would go away. I was like, “Everyone’s going to get over this. They’re going to laugh about it for a day or two, and then we’ll be moving on to something else.” I was sitting tight and waiting for everyone to move past it, but that didn’t happen as quickly as I thought. My phone kept ringing and my agent was like, “All of these people want to have an interview.” I’m like, “To talk about what?” I was like, “If I don’t read the comments and I don’t read the things that are said, then I’m protecting myself. When I opened my phone, it was like an explosion. When I didn’t look at my phone, everything was normal and calm. Life was completely normal. It was a strange time.

It was like peeking into a whirlwind every time you picked up your phone.

I was telling my friends when I was at Denny’s with my kids. There was only one waitress at the time. I used to waitress, so I’m looking and I’m like, “She’s the only person here. She’s bussing and she’s having to do everything.” My kids are making a mess. I’m cleaning up food off the floor so that she didn’t have to do it. My phone was ringing and it’s my agent going like, “Ryan Reynolds wants to know if you want to do the Today show.” I’m like, “I’m cleaning the floor at Denny’s now. Can you give me a second?” It was this crazy opposite world. I’m like, “My phone is in a different world.”

Once you see someone's face on your TV that many times without your consent, eventually people are going to get sick of seeing your face. Click To Tweet

You should have been like, “I will do GMA, but only if I’m in Deadpool Three.”

That was the only interview that I did. I ended up doing that because, at that point, many people had made up their own stories about my response and were giving fake interview articles as if I had talked to anyone. I’m like, “I’ll do it because he’s going on and they’ll be more focused on him.” I know that they’ll speak to me briefly and then move on to him.

Who can say no to America’s sweetheart, Ryan Reynolds?

When I came back home, everyone was like, “What did he smell like?” You would be shocked by how many men and women asked me what he smelled like. I was like, “What?”

If you would have given me a list of questions, any guests in the world what people ask, that would never cross my mind.

I was like, “I think I was having a stroke so burnt toast.” I don’t know the smell that you smell when you’re nervous. I don’t remember any smell at all. That’s probably a good thing.

Any time a woman walks away from me and doesn’t remember the smell, I chalk that up as a win. I would rather no remembrance of, even if they remembered a good smell, it’s not worth rolling the dice.

Speaking of Ryan Reynolds, how did the commercial with him come to be his company? How did that all happen?

They contacted my agent. At first, my agent was like, “I don’t know what’s going on. This is weird.” She even was thinking, “Let this go away too.” It’s not like I had a publicist or someone who knew how to handle all of these sorts of inquiries. She was just my commercial agent. She was like, “Don’t talk to anybody yet. Let’s see what happens. Let’s figure this out.” When they contacted her about the gin idea, she called me and she said, “Aviation Gin.” I thought she said, “Aviation gym,” like a local gym in Redondo Beach. I was like, “Aviation, is that going to be a local commercial?” She was like, “You’ve never heard of them? They have funny commercials.” I was like, “No.” She must have thought I was crazy. Of course, I had heard of them. I heard her wrong when she said it. When she came back to me with the idea, I was like, “Gin, I get it.” They gave me the idea and then I got worried because I thought, “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to be perceived as making fun of Peloton or the commercial.” Everyone was nice. I don’t want them to think I’m making fun of them. I went back and forth.

Did they have to retool? Was that a little bit of an element or was that never an issue?

I was concerned about it because when you shoot something like that and you’ve got funny people writing these commercials, they want to try different stuff. They want to say, “How about say this? How about do this?” You don’t know what’s going to end up in the end. I’m always game for stuff, but in this particular situation, I want to make sure that they understand that we’re playing along with this whole craziness and that we’re not taking a jab at you or joining this negative conversation. I was nervous about how it was going to be perceived, but they were so nice. They were like, “No, we don’t want to make fun of them. It’s not about that. It’s about taking some of the air out of this because it’s wild now.”

I remember when the Aviation Gin commercial came out, my first thought was I know how Ryan Reynolds can be. He’s funny and that’s not a compliment I hand out lightly. I was like, “This is good. This could be skewering,” but it was sweet.

I loved the way it came across because it brought you into the conversation in a different way. It was kind of laughing back at all the people who got upset. Not even making fun of them, but everybody got to be in on the same joke at the same time.

I even contacted the guy that played my husband in the commercial and let him know. I gave him a heads up. I was like, “I want to make sure that this is not in any way trying to make fun of you.” He was like, “Go for it. I’m having so much fun with this.” He was taking all the interviews and he was having so much fun. He was like, “Best wishes, do whatever you want.” He was such a good sport too, even though he got a lot more backlash than I did as far as I saw. I tried to avoid reading a lot of it.

With the public interpretation of the spot, you’re the victim, he’s the d-bag. Your actors and these are documentaries.

He’s a school teacher. He teaches PE in Canada and he is the nicest person ever. I was like, “This is crazy.”

In general, obviously, you were trying to avoid everything, but did the attention itself bother you? Did the reaction bother you?

It did. It bothered me because I wasn’t a part of the conversation. I didn’t want to be because I respected the fact that some people were triggered by the whole thing. If you saw it one way and you were triggered by it, I didn’t want to be dismissive of that. I was just the actor in the commercial. I didn’t write it. Another thing is that there were a lot of things that were left out of that commercial because they have to cut it down to 30 seconds. If they would’ve put in a couple of lines or scenes that would have clarified things a little bit better, maybe this never even would have happened, but who knows? I felt all the attention I’m getting is because people want to know what side I’m on. I was like, “I just want to work.” I don’t want to be only remembered for this. A lot of people probably would have liked the opportunity to get the spotlight, but I wasn’t ready for it. I’ve been doing commercials for so long and that was completely unexpected. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know at all how to handle it.

I feel like you don’t see that happen with commercials as frequently as you used to because there are many more places to see a commercial these days where it used to be. There’s one of three networks and you make a creative spot with “Mean” Joe Greene. All of a sudden, that’s what everybody is talking about.

I have no idea what that is.

That’s where he throws the kid at Jersey. The kid follows him and he had a bad game and he gives him a coke. Did I hear you, right? You only did one interview surrounding this and it was for the Today Show.

Honestly, that was the only one I did because I knew that Ryan Reynolds was going to be there at the exact same time promoting his new movie that was premiering that week. I thought, “That’ll be safe. I’ll go. They’ll talk to me quickly and then they’ll move on to him.”

I feel honored now.

I know because then once you guys reached out, I was like, “Now that I have a bike and I love it, I can relate to all of the people in the community. This is a good place to talk about it because these are all people that are interested in it.” That was another thing too. With the idea of the commercial, it touched on a lot of things that people who already had bikes felt. That was where I missed the boat or the mark a little bit with some people. They were trying to sell it to people that don’t already have a bike, but the idea of the commercial was sold on the people who have one. They were all reaching out to me and going, “This is my story.”

We had this exact conversation on the show because that is exactly how I felt. We get on here and talk about Peloton every week. I document everything I do for Peloton.

With all the stuff going on with COVID, if you go on Twitter and look for Peloton for interesting articles or comments or maybe guests, I swear to God, at least once a day, there’s somebody that makes a variation on the joke that Peloton wife was right. Was there a moment when you felt a definitive line in the sand where you were like, “The nation has moved on and my life has returned to normal,” or did it slowly get back in that direction?

It slowly got back once I did the interview and I was like, “It was my face.” I blamed it on my face and I was like, “Let’s end this here.” Everyone lost interest because, for that period of time where I didn’t say anything, there were a lot of people saying, “Leave her alone,” and defending me as if I was crying somewhere. I’m just waiting for those to go away. I was fine. Once people realized that I was not that upset about it and that it wasn’t going to be that much drama involved in the story behind the actor in the commercial, I think people lost interest.

Here’s probably the most important question or at least I would think ultimately the most important question to you that you would have is, were you able to leverage this professionally?

It’s hard to say because with 2020, the way that it’s been, I think about that all the time. Certain things came to us like offers came, but they were all having to do with the commercial like, “We want to do this and it’s going to be a play on this.” I’m like, “No, I don’t want to do that.” The Bold and the Beautiful, which was a show that I watched growing up for many years. My husband makes fun of me to this day because it was always on the DVR and I would come home and watch it quickly. When you fast forward the commercials, the show is not even twenty minutes long. It is short. I’ve been watching it since I was in high school and they reached out to me. One of the producers was at a holiday party and they were like, “Let’s ask the Peloton woman if she’ll be on the show.”

They DMed me and I responded. I was excited because it was like, “The Bold and the Beautiful.” I didn’t even check with my agent. I was like, “Yes, I’ll do it.” That was more for me and my family. My mom and my sisters were thrilled. I went to do that and I thought it was supposed to be one episode, but it turned into twenty or something like that. That was fun. That was an awesome thing that I got to do. I was a doctor and I was delivering terrible news.

When you get the DM from them, how do you know that that’s real? How do you know that it’s not something on Instagram?

I saw the thing. I saw the name. I looked at his page. I looked at his credentials, like who was following him, who he was following. I also Googled his name to make sure to double-check.

I’ve heard, with COVID, it’s getting hard to film these shows.

We had to halt the production back in March. We were one of the first productions to go back. It was like everyone was watching to see what was going to happen. It was crazy in the beginning because they didn’t even want more than three actors on the set at one time because they wanted to keep 6 feet distance. When you were doing a scene, they would give you a dummy for your eyeline. It was crazy. Some of the actors have their real husbands and wives coming in still to do kissing scenes or anything. They were using mannequins and dummies, and they got creative, and the camera, they did a good job. It was hard too because I was like, “There’s no head on that dummy. Where are its eyes?

Now that you’re on the other side of it. If you had to do it all over again, would you?

I think so. I tried not to get too involved in all the craziness that went on, but it was one of those things that happen in your life. That’s such a thrill for your family and your friends who know you. It was fun to see them enjoying it. I felt like it was one of those things where it was like, “I know her. You know her.” There were moms at my son’s preschool that were coming up to me going, “You look exactly like this woman in this commercial for Peloton.”

They didn’t know it was you.

I had to tell people that was me. They’re like, “What?” It was funny. People were sending me messages, “I’m sorry. People are being mean.” I’m like, “Don’t tell me what they’re saying because I’m not reading it.” People were trying to comfort me. I was like, “I’m okay. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but don’t tell me.”

Until this show, you’ve never read any of the crazy stuff.

I saw a few things, but some of the things made me laugh hard. There was one tweet where they were like, “If I have to see this girl’s F-ed up eyebrows one more time.” I laughed hard because that’s something that people say. Once you see someone’s face on your TV that many times without your consent, it keeps popping up. Eventually, people are going to get sick of seeing your face. I think that was another reason why I didn’t do a lot of the interviews too, because I’m like, “People already had enough.”

I think people were madder at Peloton than you or on your actor husband.

That’s true. It was after I did the Today show and I said, “I think it was the look on my face that stuck with everyone.” They called my agent that day and were like, “We want to send Monica a bike.” I was like, “That’s how you get a bike.” I got a bike and now I am part of the community.

You sold them a lot of bikes. That was worth every penny. When did you end up getting your bike?

I got it in February. I had to make space in this terrible, tiny garage that we had. We moved, but we have this little garage that I was like, “I need to make space for this beautiful, expensive bike. What am I going to do?” The guys that delivered it were asking my husband because he went outside for them to deliver it. They had his name on the delivery and they were like, “Are you familiar with the bike?” He was like, “No, but my wife is. She was the one in the commercial.” The guys were like, “She was?” He was like, “Do you want me to have her come out?” It was funny how surprised they were. They were delivering a bike to the Peleton woman. We took pictures and stuff.

They were probably like, “She divorced the guy from the commercial and didn’t get custody of the bike?”

It was in his name. I wanted it in my name. It is my new fresh start.

What do you think of it? How much do you ride it?

When I first got it, I was always the person that needed to go to a class and be in a class with someone telling me what to do so that I didn’t give up or stop early. I was never the kind of person that could work out at home. I’d always be like, “That’s enough. I’m tired.” I didn’t realize the way that these bikes were was that there are people riding live with you that you can see that are helping hold you accountable. I didn’t get that right away at first. I was like, “There are live classes. There are on-demand classes.” I didn’t know because when we were shooting the commercial, the bike wasn’t powered on. They explained it to me, but I’d never been on one before. I’d only done spin classes. When I got it, I was like, “This is cool.” When things started to close down with all of the restrictions and stuff, I was like, “I’m going to give this more of a chance. I’m going to get on it more often.” I was on it every single day then I broke my toe on one of my kids’ toys. I couldn’t put a shoe on for a month and I thought I was going to lose it, then I got back on. My goal is 200 by my birthday, which is December 20th.

How close are you?

I’m close. I’m going to make it. I have to at least do one ride a day. I think maybe one day I have to do two rides. I want a shout out. Is that how you get one? You have to have a birthday and a milestone on the same day.

Change your leaderboard named to Peloton Wife.

Here’s what I want to know. Who are you riding with? Do you have a favorite instructor?

I rode with Hannah Frankson. She had a live ride. I love her. She’s calm, but she’s also all business in a lot of ways. I like that about her. I feel she’s like a teammate that you’d play sports with growing up. She is someone good and encouraging, but strong and you want to be like her. I ride a lot with Cody because of his music. His pop music makes me feel like I’m socializing again with other adults.

When you decide who you want to ride with for your 200 and that’s a big week because it’s right before the holidays. There are going to be many holiday rides. It’s going to be a tough choice for you. When you decide, what you do is you reach out to them on Instagram. Whoever you decide to ride with, let me know. If you want, you can send me an email. I will get ahold of their admin in their Facebook group and connect you through that. A lot of times, the admins for their Facebook group talk to the instructor, depending on who it is. If they know you’re going to be on, they will totally give you a shout out. I guarantee you.

I want to do it. I keep telling my husband, “I want to shout out.” He was like, “Why don’t you message one of them?” I’m like, “They’re not going to respond to me.”

They will.

They’re busy and they’re famous and everyone’s asking them to do that.

You’re the Peloton Wife. They are going to respond to you.

I’m sure there are many people that use the screen grabs as a joke now.

Mine, I have a little tiny icon of a sunset which is basic on there.

Crystal is like a Peloton concierge. She will intercede on your behalf.

I will email you and we will go from there.

How advance do they put out the schedule? When can I look and see it?

At least a week. Some of the stuff for the 19th, whatever that Sunday is, I know the Jenn Sherman ride is already up. I know some of those rides are already populated through the 20th. Before COVID hit, they did two weeks. Now, because of COVID, they do it a week-ish. For the bike, there are more options than the other disciplines. They tend to go closer to two weeks. If you were looking at yoga, for example, you might only see a week out, but whenever you’re looking at the bike, they have more options. Keep an eye on that. Make your plan for your big 200. You contact them ahead of time. If you do share your leaderboard name here on the show, I guarantee you, you will get tons of high fives because everybody will be excited to ride with you.

I love high-fiving. I’m like a big high-fiver. If I see people that I follow or that follow me on a ride, I’ll join the class, high-five them, and then leave to do a class that I was going to do. Sometimes, I’ll high five people that are ahead of me and behind me to be encouraging and I’m like, “What if they think I’m talking trash?” I never know what I’m doing.

Have fun. Don’t overthink it. I do not appreciate the high-fives where somebody passes me and then they high-five me.

That’s what I’m always worried about.

They call that on your left with the middle finger.

I liked that beta testing thing that they did. Do you know when they’re going to introduce that for good?

I was told they were going to take it down for a couple of weeks and then it was going to be back. I don’t think it will be a very long wait at all.

I liked that. Did you like that?

I loved it. I had so much fun with that. For anybody who’s not sure what we’re talking about, we’re talking about The Sessions. You could go in, join, and start a whole fresh new leaderboard. The Peloton Prophet, as we call it, they sometimes come up with how things are going to go. They said that they are going to be up for a couple of weeks. They would do tweaks and take all the information from everybody, then it would come back shortly thereafter. In early 2021, there’s going to be class stacking. You could make a playlist of 2 or 3 classes that you can take back-to-back. That’s going to be exciting.

 

They’re coming out with all kinds of cool stuff.

They never stop making changes. They are like George Lucas and movies he made many years ago. He would keep making changes to it forever. People like those changes.

Do you use any of the other Peloton content? Do you get to do any of the strength classes or any of that? Do you enjoy doing any of that other stuff?

I tried some of the Bike Bootcamp classes. I loved them. I’ve done the running outside, like running ones. I’ve done yoga and some of the meditation ones. I like all of them, but I find that I push myself much harder on the actual bike. The running outside, that one I haven’t been doing because I can’t run in a mask. I tried and it was uncomfortable. It’s tough so I was like, “Maybe I’ll hold off on that for a little while.” When I first got it and we didn’t have to be in masks outside, I tried it and I loved it. I thought it was great because it feels like someone is coaching you. You feel like you have a personal trainer with you.

When you are able to go back outside without a mask again, a lot of the classes that they do that aren’t necessarily for outdoors, they’ll coach you through it and be like, “Here’s your halfway point if you’re outside.” They’ll tell you to come back so you can still take some of those as well so you’re not just restricted to the outdoor content. I enjoy those as well.

I liked that they offer all of that stuff because then if you’re not near your bike and you still want to work out, there are many things that you can still do. My bike, the power cord broke off and fell into the bike. I was like, “No.” I called Peloton and they were like, “The next available person to come out and fix it is one month from now.” I was like, “What?” I literally posted a picture of the broken wire on my Nextdoor app and somebody messaged me right away and were like, “I’m an electrician. I can fix that.” I was like, “When, now? I need to hit 200 rides by my birthday.” He was like, “What are you talking about?”

Maybe that’ll make people feel better if they’re waiting for their Bike+ and it gets delayed. The Peloton Wife couldn’t get her power cord.

I did not try to pull any cards, but I don’t know if I even have any.

Probably not with customer service because it’s tier one support and they’d be like, “What? How many times do we get that?” What is your leaderboard name, if you would care to share?

It’s not that interesting. I wanted to ask you guys too, can you change your leaderboard name as many times as you want and then go back to anything that you had before or can somebody else take it? How does that work?

You can change it anytime you want, but it can also be taken. There was a great debacle, a very controversial. There’s a long-time rider named Yaya, that’s her leaderboard name, Yanina. She changed her leaderboard name to celebrate somebody’s milestone. It was a big thing. Everybody changed their leaderboard name one morning to celebrate this milestone. She changed it for 45 minutes. She went back to change it back and it was gone. It turned into a big kerfuffle. She did eventually get it back, but these days, I would not try it. If you already have one that you love, stick with it.

I don’t love it. It’s literally Moniru. When I first put a name, I was thinking of when they make you choose a username on any website that you go to or whatever. I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of like, “This is the leaderboard name. This is what everyone sees.” I wasn’t thinking about it that way because I didn’t have a bike. I didn’t know what it was like. Now, every time I get on, I’m like, “I need a better name.”

I don’t know how you don’t choose Peloton Mom, Peloton Wife, or Peloton Woman. If any of those were available, that needs to be yours. You need it. I would petition that even if it’s not available, somebody needs to give it up for you because you earned that.

I’ll change it.

I don’t know how many characters you get.

You could use thirteen. I don’t know if it is accurate.

You could use The Real Peloton Wife.

That’s another option.

The Official, maybe all emojis.

You’ll then never get a shout out. You have to follow up and tell us if you do change it. Also, if you change it before your 200, I definitely need to know that if I help you with getting your shout out from your instructor.

I’ll let you know if I change it. I haven’t decided, but I want something a little more interesting.

I’m sure if you posted about it on Instagram, you would get about a million responses. Everybody has an opinion.

I think she knows all about the internet and their opinions.

I told my husband, “If people start following me and they start seeing me and they look at my rides, they’re going to know when I got tired and tried to give up for a minute. They’re going to be looking at me. I’m going to be held more accountable.”

On the other hand, you could tell him to get a life.

It’s like, “Sorry, my kid came in the room and wanted me to get a cookie.”

You are still a mom. You’ve got a two-year-old and a four-year-old. That’s a lot to handle.

Usually, when I try to ride is when the two-year-old is taking a nap and the four-year-old gets the iPad and I can do a maximum of a 30-minute ride. The whole time he’s asking to get on the bike and I’m like, “Five more minutes.”

Do you have any advice for people who are getting a bike?

My only advice would be to try out a lot of different instructors because I saw something online once that was like, this is the instructor for every mood that you’re in. That’s true. I tend to get stuck with the same instructors a lot because I get used to the kind of music they play or their routine. I’m like, “I don’t want to veer away from that.” I’ll mix it up one time and be like, “Why don’t I ride with this person more often?” Trying a lot of different instructors right off the bat would be a good idea because then you can see that they’re all different moods.

That’s good advice. I wholeheartedly agree.

Before we let you go, where can people find you on the interwebs if you want to be found?

I’m on Instagram as @MonPearl. Everyone kept telling me, “You need to change your Instagram name because people don’t know who you are because of your Instagram name.” I’m like, “That’s okay.” It says Monica Ruiz when you go there. If you look for Monica Ruiz, that’s mine, but that’s my Instagram. I’m not on Facebook anymore. Too many people try to hack it when all of this stuff was happening. I was like, “Maybe I should get rid of this,” and I never put it back on. That’s the only place I am.

I have to tell you a brief story. I don’t even know if you’ll remember this, but there was an instructor that worked for Peloton named Steven Little.

I remember because I was putting Christmas cards in a mailbox and he goes, “Are you the Peloton woman?” I said, “Yes.” He goes, “I was an instructor. Can we get a selfie?” I was like, “Sure.” If I had a bike, if that happened to me now, I would have been freaking out about an instructor. I didn’t have a bike back then and I was like, “You’re nice.”

I couldn’t find you on Instagram. I looked for you on Instagram. When I followed Steven Little, whenever he posted that selfie and then he tagged you, that’s how I started following you. He’s been on the show as well.

He was nice. He was walking his dog and it was cute.

Thank you for taking the time to join us, especially I’m doubly honored. I didn’t realize that you didn’t make the rounds so I am honored that you chose us.

I’m glad. It’s a perfect place to talk about it because this is a community of people who are all like-minded. I wanted to come and talk to you guys because you are enthusiastic about this. Not trying to get me to say something that I’ll regret.

We love Peloton and we love the whole thing. It’s great to talk to you because I feel like we’ve documented the entire process. It’s fun to come full circle and get to talk to you directly.

She is the only person in the world with two Peloversaries.

Maybe that’s my new screen name, Two Peloversaries.

It’s probably not taken.

You have to snag it.

That will be great for your birthday present as well. We will let you go. Thank you again and you have a great rest of your day.

Thank you, you too. Bye, guys.

—

That brings this one to a close it does. Everyone is rushing off to follow the Peloton wife on their bike.

I did immediately, and I hope that her toe is not broken so that she can still take her Milestone Ride. I’m rooting for her.

Fingers and toes crossed for that. Thank you very much to her for agreeing to do that. I didn’t realize until we were in the middle of the interview that she hadn’t said yes to any of that stuff. I felt very honored.

Also, make sure to reach out to her and tell her Happy Birthday. It’s a big weekend. It’s going to have the birthday and then she’s going to be on the show, and then hopefully she’s going to do her Milestone Ride.

What pray tell do you have in store for people not next week, but in two weeks? We will not have an episode next week because next week Friday is Christmas day.

We’re taking a day.

Let us have Christmas.

We are going to talk to you, Dr. Stephen Nalbach.

Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me at Facebook.com/CrystalDOKeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter on the Bike and of course the Tread, @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TomOKeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group, check out our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/theclipout, where you can see all of these interviews like Monica Ruiz in all the video glory. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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• https://www.TMZ.com/2020/12/10/peloton-sued-deaf-people-app-no-closed-captioning/?fbclid=IwAR0ykdh4n1LCIC5NoNeQ9DTZWiufuPgpOjbx8wJioaf6SslQgKaM-zGuJOA
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• https://www.CNBC.com/2020/12/14/apple-fitness-plus-review-release-date-price.html?fbclid=IwAR2vbuWgfBOxMW6cQgm4_3Lm27ygIDvlY6auTBJi-w27nmSyuarif1gbSDI
• https://www.BlogTo.com/sports_play/2020/12/toronto-company-canadian-version-peloton/
• https://www.NYTimes.com/2020/12/11/nyregion/coronavirus-peloton-john-foley.html?auth=linked-google
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• https://Blog.OnePeloton.com/shonda-rhimes-partnership/?fbclid=IwAR2mzZoVoesKw_pGHmJidPCfbX8yZW6pzsiub_lES0r-ME-sA-FZGymbZyg
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