Most health trends come and go, almost as soon as you’ve unpacked your cold press juicer.
But the business world’s affinity for combining client meetings and work outs is only getting stronger at intensive fitness spots like Barry’s Bootcamp, SoulCycle, and Rumble, and gyms like Equinox. The trend has been building for a while now with professionals in media relations and the entertainment industry in cities like New York and Los Angeles, with bankers slowly beginning to jump on the model over the last years. Now, Wall Street is full engaged in this mentality.
“Instead of going out, I see so many entertain by going to workout classes before and after work,” says Sean Liebowitz, a director and energy/industrials trader at Sanford Bernstein, who specifically mentions Rumble, SoulCycle, and Ripped as popular venues.
Barry’s Bootcamp, where much of the maximum cardio workouts take place on treadmills that are kicked up to 10 mph, has seen an increase in early bookings to insure side-by-side workout spots. Vicky Land, vice president of communications and brand strategy at Barry’s, notes that that kind of service comes at a premium.
“We often act as a concierge service to guarantee side-by-side treadmills. We do that that quite frequently for people in finance,” she says. “We have a lot of ‘two spots’ which are people ‘sweat-entertaining.’”
The cost is $50 per person, almost 30 percent more than an average class. The experience validates the cost, says Land.
“Everything is relationship based these days. If you have a fun work out with a client, it’s much more impactful than wheeling and dealing over the dinner table,” she says.
Unsurprisingly, Land says that the Tribeca and NoHo locations are the ones where they see the highest percentage of client workouts. They have no immediate plans to open in the Financial District. “We get a lot of requests to open in Midtown, where there are a lot of hedge funds. Last year we actually got a call from a hedge fund asking if we could hold Barry's classes in their large private gym,” she reports.
At the high intensity biking destination SoulCycle, there is now a four person corporate sales team to accommodate the demand for events and special business requests. “There are only so many steaks business people want to eat in a week,” says Gabby Etrong Cohen, senior vice president of PR and brand strategy. “Across the board, people are time strapped, they don’t have 4 hours to hit the golf course, or 2 hours for a boozy meal. Plus, they want to do something good for themselves, plus they get networking out of it.”
Some of SoulCycle’s biggest finance clients are Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and ING, according to Cohen. The company has 84 studios across the U.S. and Canada; the Financial District location is one of the busiest in early mornings. Cohen notes that San Francisco’s South of Market studio also does heavy corporate business.