Elizabeth Cutler
speaker
62 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Elizabeth Cutler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
As SoulCycle was taking off, many of their top instructors had been Andrea's students for years.
While Andrea was running Made in LA, Janet was approached by the CFO of Disney, who offered $1 million to go into business with him. Janet's studio would reflect the spiritual nature her classes embodied. This would become body, And soul.
It's true. No one had seen Studio Fitness like this, including a devoted body and soul writer of Janet's, a talent agent named Julie Rice.
While working in Hollywood, Julie worked as a talent agent and manager for Benny Medina. Benny Medina was a record exec and known for turning celebrities into brands. Think Jennifer Lopez, Tyra Banks, Mariah Carey, and yeah, even Sean P. Diddy Combs. It was this understanding of how to turn instructors into brand ambassadors that would become one of SoulCycle's secret weapons.
2006, New York City. Julie Rice and her husband had left Hollywood to be closer to family in New York because they now had a five month old baby. They were now living on the Upper West Side and Julie was regularly taking classes at the most popular gym in the city, Reebok Sports Club. Julie became friends with her spin instructor at Reebok, a woman named Ruth Zuckerman.
Ruth was a former dancer, fresh from a divorce and a single mom to teenage girls. Ruth had been cobbling together a teaching schedule between the luxury Reebok Sports Club and Out in East Hampton. While Julie was the core of Ruth's following at Reebok, she found another dedicated rider out in East Hampton named Elizabeth Cutler.
Just like Julie, Elizabeth also had relocated to Manhattan with a young baby. Separately, both Elizabeth and Julie confessed to Ruth that they had dreams of opening their own spin studio. While Julie did not have any money, Elizabeth did. With her own success in real estate and running her own healing practice, her family had money to invest in a startup.
Naturally, Ruth set up a lunch to introduce Julie and Elizabeth. They would meet at the Soho house where Julie and Elizabeth bonded instantly. The recipe was simple. Elizabeth brought the capital. Julie brought the marketing and branding. Ruth brought her riders and would be the face of the business.
SoulCycle opened its doors in April of 2006. Together, the three founders rented a space on the Upper West Side that they found on Craigslist. Per their lease, they were not allowed to use any outside signage, so you really had to find the place. It was very DIY.
Julie and Elizabeth were designing the studio out of IKEA furniture, they folded their own towels, and they passed out flyers on the street. The founders kicked around a few names before landing on SoulCycle, but I wonder if Julie's experience at Body and Soul had any lasting imprint.
Ruth was the one and only instructor while Julie and Elizabeth ran the business. They knew every single rider who came through their doors.
Aaron is an original rider from the 72nd Street era. He works in fashion and first discovered Seoul the way most savvy New Yorkers shared information in 2006, through blogs and email newsletters.
In the early 2000s, subscribing to the Daily Candy email newsletter was your best bet for finding the best restaurants, clubs and bars in Manhattan.
Glennis is another original 72nd Street rider. She was a young Upper West Sider and had actually taken Ruth's class back at Reebok.
The people who were taking spin classes at big box gyms did not use the rest of the gym. So they were paying a monthly membership for just this one class. Therefore, it made it easy for them to abandon their gym membership and pay for something that solely focused on the thing they cared about.
A New York Times article from 2010 reads, The remaining founders, Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, seem intent on expunging their former partner from their past. The company's story on SoulCycle's website doesn't even mention her. In a joint interview with Julie and Elizabeth, they simply said, "...Ruth worked for us for a time. We decided to part ways. We wish her the best."
Yet they seemed visibly uncomfortable, hands tucked between their thighs as if bracing for impact.
We'll never know exactly what the conversation was between the three women, but we can certainly piece the story together. While Julie and Elizabeth were experienced businesswomen, Ruth was naive and did not have any proper legal protection in place.
In talking with Janet, I remembered how Ruth still maintains to this day that, quote, they don't know anything about SPIN.
And what about the writers? Did they have any idea what was going on behind the scenes?
Showing 41–60 of 62 · page 3 of 4
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