We’re still spotlighting our favorite episodes from the LinkedIn Podcast Network. The start of a new year is an opportunity for change, so this week we’re sharing an inspiring conversation about career pivots from Hello Monday. LinkedIn’s Jessi Hempel chats with Peloton’s Robin Arzon about her journey from being a corporate lawyer to becoming a fitness expert. Robin’s story shows us that careers are not linear and taking that leap of faith is worth it.
Do you have any burning questions about work? We want to hear them! You can email us your questions at letstalkoffline@linkedin.com.
Check out more episodes of Hello Monday: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hello-monday-with-jessi-hempel/id1453893304
For more, follow Gianna (http://linkedin.com/in/giannaprudente) and Jamé (http://linkedin.com/in/jamejackson) on LinkedIn and subscribe to Gianna’s weekly newsletter: https://linkedin.com/letstalkoffline.
Credits
Gianna Prudente - Co-host, Early Career Development Editor, LinkedIn
Jamé Jackson - Co-host, Community Manager, LinkedIn
Sabrina Fang - Producer, Western Sound
Maya Pope-Chappell - Director of Content & Audience Development, LinkedIn
Jessi Hempel - Chief Content Officer, LinkedIn
Savannah Wright - Senior Producer, Western Sound
Sarah Dealy - Associate Producer, Western Sound
Alex MacInnis - Engineer, Western Sound
Courtney Coupe - Head of Original Programming, LinkedIn
Dan Roth - Editor in Chief, LinkedIn
Ben Adair - Executive Producer, Western Sound
Katrina Norvell - Executive Producer, iHeartMedia
Nikke Ettore - Executive Producer, iHeartMedia
LinkedIn News.
From LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts, this is Let's Talk Offline. I'm Giana Prudenti.
And I'm Jamaie Jackson Gadsden.
First of all, Happy New Year, y'all.
Yay.
We are still sharing some of our favorite episodes from other shows in the LinkedIn podcast network.
Yes, and because we're heading into a new year, we know some of our work besties might be thinking about reinventing their careers, so we're sharing an episode from Hello Monday, LinkedIn's Jesse Hemple Chatawick Peloton's Robin Arzon about professional pivots.
We really loved this episode because as someone who's shifted careers a few times herself, Robin's story is really inspiring for anyone who might be thinking about pursuing a different profession. I mean, she went from being a corporate lawyer to a fitness expert, oh goals. Her story goes to show that our careers are not linear and we can really grow in the most unexpected ways. So we hope you enjoy this conversation from Hello Monday.
From the news team at LinkedIn. I'm Jesse Hemple and this is Hello Monday, our show about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing us. Even if you know exactly what you want to do right from the start, there often comes a point in your career where it's time to reevaluate. Things change, you change. Say you chose law and suddenly you're north of thirty with an expensive degree and a big career, and you realize you just don't want to do it. How do you screw up the courage to leave the safety and security of the subject you've mastered and start a new career. Today's guest has some advice.
Say yes before you think you're ready. I see so many folks hesitant to throw their hands up to say hell, yeah, I'm gonna do that thing, simply because they haven't trained, or they haven't read about this or that. It's like, figure it out along the way.
You might recognize that voice. You might even work out with her. That's Robin rs On. She's in charge of fitness programming for Peloton. Everything she says in her workouts sounds a bit like that. To hear Robin today, you might think she was always an athlete. In fact, she didn't go for her first run until she was in her twenties. As a kid, Robin was absolutely passionate about the law, so much so that she became a lawyer, and she really loved it for a while. But eight years in, right around the time that a lot of people go for partner, Robin decided it was time to go for something else.
She left law for.
A career in fitness. Robin's career story mirrors her approach to competition. Her dramatic shift looks like a big win in hindsight, and it is. She's having an incredible run at Peloton, but justice with her marathons or in Robin's case, ultra marathons, Robin prepared for this shift. She trained, She decided when to hang back and say no to mediocre opportunities and when to go all out. And most important, she told herself every day that of course she could do it. She knows you can too. Here's Robin.
I wanted to be an attorney since I was ten years old. My father was an attorney and he was also a law professor of teaching real estate. So I, you know, sat at top blue books when I was you know, four and five years old for the old school lawyers in the house who actually wrote in blue books. So I had this enchanted idea that I would arm myself with law and you know, go into these these battles fuelled with justice, and some of that I did do, but you know, the actuality was different than the vision.
Well, so you you spent a while practicing law, what was it eight years?
Yeah, I was a rise seventh year when I when I left my law firm.
So maybe it could tell us a little bit about what you liked and what maybe you liked a little bit less during that time.
Well, I find for ambitious people, we can it's actually pretty easy to find an intellectual pursuit that we find interesting, even if the subject matter is dry. So I was a corporate litigator. I worked with a lot of sec stuff. This is at the height of subprime so it was a very tense time in the market, and I was able to focus and adapt and just dig in. And I think intellectual folks often find that it's it's maybe not easy, but it's simple to just dig in. But that doesn't mean that it's actually aligning with our with our values, with our goals, and with a happiness quotient. That is something that I discovered when I was leading a divorce existence between athletics and law. So what I liked about law, I worked with brilliant partners. I learned about business. I think through OSMO, I would not have viewed fitness as a business and myself frankly as a brand, as a burgeoning brand then had I not worked in corporate litigation. But I also knew that there was something palpably missing when I would count down the hours in my day until I could go for a thirty minute run in such a park, so that divorced existence was not satisfying.
And that running piece. I was surprised to discover that you actually hadn't grown up. If you had loved law at ten, you did not love running at ten.
Right, No, I was allergic to exercise actually into adulthood. I was the arts and crafts and straight a student. I did not identify as an athlete. I was petrified of gym class. I actually was made fun of for the way I ran when I was a kid. So I think that that stuck in my brain early as something that I didn't do, and I had to really recreate myself and start to write a different story. Once I realized that I was curious about what this running thing was.
How did you come to running?
Frankly, it was really through trauma. I was in law school, and the prior year, in my senior year at NYU, I was held at gunpoint in New York City, and that experience understandably stayed with me. A year later, when I was in law school, I realized, Wow, I guess I didn't really deal with as much of this as I thought I had, And I have no idea why, but I was drawn to a pair of shoes that were in the back of my closet collecting dust, and I decided to jog to class one day instead of you know, drive the mile and a half and that is where that was really where my journey started.
Wow, And from a mile and a half, you've moved on to fifty miles.
In a pub yes, ultra marathon territory.
So during your the remainder of your path through school and during the beginning years of your law practice, fitness was increasingly important to you. When and how did the way that you feel about it really start to change?
It was a slow burn, I would say, because they ran in parallel tracks, you know, up unintended where I really was still at the ncency of my law career and feeling like, what's more. And while I was falling in love with running, I was also getting curious about what's it like to be in house, what's it like to practice different areas of law? You know, I dabbled in trademarks, I had IP stuff, so I was still kind of just trying to see if I could make the passion I found in the run something that I could find in my day to day law practice. And because I was so new, having practiced only a few years, I thought, there's got to be something out there that I haven't considered. And it was in that search actually that I started to realize if I uncheck all the boxes of what folks say you could do in journalism or using the written word or storytelling within wellness, which is really where my mind was going. I thought, maybe I can create a career that hasn't really happened before.
As you lay out your law career, and I think this is true about firm law in some ways, the path is very set, it's very linear. You have a good sense of what it looks like, and there's something very safe to that. And when you choose instead to take all of the tools, all of the years of school, in some cases years of student debt, and aim it towards a thing that you can't name yet. Well, that's got to take a level of bravery, and I'm just curious how you thought about it.
At the time, it did feel brave, but maybe not as brave as I realize it was in retrospect. I bet on myself and I still believe that I'm my greatest investment. I had to assess my worth and then add a little tax, and then I had to have an honest conversation of what I didn't know and what gaps I needed to fill. And I wasn't unknown in the marketplace, certainly in wellness, and I had to acknowledge that I had to say no quite a few times to offer as I didn't think were of my value and continue to bet on myself until I got the right yeses. And that balancing act for about eighteen months before I found Peloton was really really challenging, because every time you say no and you have a red check, do you feel like you might be at the end of the line.
I love that idea of saying no, like you're moving away from the thing that you have known, you're moving towards something new. Talk a little bit about figuring out what to say yes to and when.
I'm a big fan of both journaling and vision boards, I think they get us in alignment with what the heck we want, and if we can provide some specificity, either visually or in the written word, that actually goes a long way. So what feels like an arts and crafts exercise of cutting out things and magazines might feel futile or juvenile, but it actually for me illustrated very clearly that I wanted to somehow marry the business acumen that I had acquired as a lawyer with something that was forward thinking and modern, marrying technology and entertainment, and I wanted to insert myself in that story, not telling other people's stories, but telling my own. It was because I was able to identify that as sort of objectives and values that mattered to me that I was able to see a blurb of Peloton. I don't even think it's more than one hundred words about Peloton and Peloton CEO Don Foley, that I was able to identify that as the shiny thing that I wanted, and I put myself, you know, directly in its path. I literally cold emailed the company and I said we need to work together, and I was hired I think forty eight hours later. So but if I would have just summed right through the magazine, if I hadn't identified that in myself in what I wanted my goals to be. So I think the process really it really starts inward.
Do you still do that? Is, do you journal consistency?
Yes, there are a lot of theories and ways to navigate goal setting, and you know with acronym smart goals all that, I totally agree with it. But for me, it's just a quarterly seasonal gut check of like what am I doing? Where am I going? Have I been uncomfortable enough recently? And if the answer is no, I'm not on the right path.
How do you continue to remain uncomfortable?
Oh? I love it. I revered discomfort. As an athlete, it's actually a pretty easy thing to identify with because when you're in the middle of a sprint, or you're at the end of a long run, or when you picked up the heavier weight that day, you're very uncomfortable, and in the moment, you don't love it, but you learn to love the feeling, the after feeling. So when you extrapolate that to other areas of your life, it still rings true.
When did the idea of athlete become central to your identity.
Increasingly as I was a lawyer. I mean, you don't. You don't cross a marathon finish line and not adopt some kind of moniker that honors that accomplishment.
Yeah, I guess that's true. Tell me about running your first marathon.
I ran it. It was New York City Marathon in twenty ten.
That was your first one, the New York City Marie, New.
York City, where I thought it was my first crossing that finish line in Social Park. It did change me. And I was still a lawyer, and I was still in the throes of my low career and really trying to get on that partner track. And it planted a seed. It planted a seed of curiosity, and I was not able to ignore it.
There's this thing that I have heard you say in a couple of your workouts. Now maybe you say in everyone where you remind us as we're running that relaxing in the stride is a key to efficiency. The efficiency of the run, I'm getting it wrong. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, better than I do.
A relaxed runner is an efficient runner.
I listened to that and it totally speaks to me because I'm like, Oh, that's not about running, that's about everything else. And I'm curious if that is what fitness feels like to you.
In every area of our lives, we're doing this delicate dance between tension and resistance that often creates momentum and release from that tension so we can actually get things done. Right. So, if you're constantly tensed, that actually isn't a state of being that is effective. But when we do that delicate dance between that forward momentum which requires discomfort and resistance and the release of it, I mean that is literally the contract and relax of a muscle. And frankly, I do believe that willpower is a muscle. I believe that resiliency, you know, is like a muscle. The more that we visit those opportunities, the greater prepared we are for the next one. We'll be right back.
Stick around. So how did you get the peloton job? You said it took about forty eight hours after a cold email.
I sent an email to the company after I read about Platon as a blurb in a magazine, and I just knew that that was it for me. I had this gut feeling that I was going to work for them, And I was the third instructor hired, and I was hired a few months before we opened our original New York City studio, And I guess the rest is kind of history.
How central is intuition to the way that you make your choices about your career?
Hugely? I agree that we should be prepared and we should be educated, But are you acting it out or are you figuring it out like? Just act it like just start? So I do believe that my intuition, through practices like listening to my own internal conversation on runs, actually informs what I do greatly. I don't always need to consult with a loved one or someone I respect to make a decision. In fact, I often don't. I think I am my own best advocate.
Well, it seems like one of the things that you advocate four in your work is helping people the better listen to themselves. Again, you cloak it under the umbrella of fitness. When people are running with you. You know, you think you're working on your physical body, but so much of the message that you seem to bring to the people that you're working out with is like, make space and make time to hear yourself and trust yourself. How do you learn that?
I have to credit marathons training for that, honestly. I mean, you don't log thousands of miles and without developing a trust for your abilities and your inner conversation. And that is the beauty I think of endurance training is that when you're out there for a few hours, you've got to confront yourself. When I ran five marathons in five days across Utah to raise money for MS research, I actually did the majority of those marathons without any podcasts or audiobooks or music, And that was part of the right of passage for me, was to say, Okay, you've reached this place in your running journey, can you actually do it just out there with yourself on the road in the mountains and deserving the beauty of Utah, Which was definitely a challenge, but I'm better for it.
Yeah, what's the next challenge?
Then? I really fell in love with barbell training in the past year. So that was an interesting pivot for me that I still run five days a week, but marrying that with the trepidation I first felt. You know, putting a barbell over my head was a different kind of fear, and I thought, ooh, that must be my next challenge because I was no longer fearing the run and healthy fear. So yeah, now I fear the barbell.
What have you learned about working at Peloton that you might not have been able to learn in the same way at corporate law form.
I have learned so much about business working cross functionally with our teams at Peloton, because we're not just a connected fitness company. In many ways, we're a media company. We're of course a hardware company. We're in the inspiration business right from the instructor perspective. I am the head instructor Peloton, and we have folks internationally now and.
Seeing how folks are able to bring a genuine, voracious passion for movement but then also marry it with all of the things that make a media company a media company and a network and network and.
A business of business. Yeah, it makes me really proud to wear a pee on my chest because we are often wearing many hats.
So is there any skill set that is the lead skill set, the most important skill set among them.
I'm hesitant to say it, but this is the real answer. It is the authenticity of wanting to do this work. Because authenticity now feels like a buzzword in marketing, but you know it when you see it, and so does the consumer. Over thousands of hours of sweating with someone, you really know who they are. And that is what we have on earth in the folks who have ultimately joined the team, is that there is a First of all, it's an eye towards a long term partnership with the company. And second, there is a true authenticity and a passion for getting people to move and step into their power. But from their point of view.
What's your relationship like with the people who are working out with you? Since it's I mean that is often not a person.
I think our members inspire the instructors more than we inspire them.
To be honest, Well, I have to tell you that as I was preparing for this, I mentioned it to a few people I know who ride peloton and they answered in a way that it felt to me like you were a friend. That they really wanted to come through for And this is not just one person, this is multiple people, multiple genders, and that's a lot of responsibility to carry Robin.
There is an intimacy to the relationship that's very different than going to watch you know, Angelina jo Lee in a movie or something like this is Yeah, there is a friendliness and an intimacy. And when your sweating and the endorphins are added to the party, that's a that's a transformative experience.
I'd say that's the right phrase. So where does your energy come from to be able to continue to bring it over and over? For so many people?
Sleep? I am notoriously a fan of sleep. I am a lights out at nine pm kind of gal. I really do prioritize my own my fuel, my sleep, my relationships, you know, with my family and those closest to me, and I own the power of no. No is a complete sentence, no with a period at the end of it is a full statement. So I establish boundaries in order to protect my energy.
That makes a lot of sense. What's your own workout schedule?
Like, you know what, the peloton classes aren't my own workouts. I kind of include them in the when I'm looking at the five thousand foot view of what I do every week, but they're not my training sessions. I'm really there up service and to be a coach and to be a guide. My workout sessions are usually six days a week, anywhere from two to three hours a day, depending on the season. When my running volume is up, those hours go up. And when I'm right now, I'm in a season of doing much more strength training, especially you know, since we've all been at home so much. The balance is usually four days a week of a cardio intensive workout, anything from intervals to more endurance cardio training, and four to five sessions a week of strength So.
How long now has it been since you practiced law?
When did I leave? I left two weeks before the twenty twelve London Olympic Games.
Wow, an interesting uh anchor to market by Yeah, surprising, I guess. So as you think about that Robin, the Robin of twenty twelve, and I ask this knowing that you encourage us to think about the people we are in twenty twenty five, to look ahead and to take care of those people. Now, what would you tell that Robin of twenty twelve?
I would tell her that pain becomes power. I would also tell her that to consistently and continually ask herself, why not me? That was the question I started to ask myself when I left laws. Why not me? Like? Why can't I be that person to monetize a career and running and wellness even though you know I will never be part of the Olympic Games or part of a competitive team. So I would remind her to continue to ask that question.
You know, we just had a woman named Angela Duckworth on the show. She went a MacArthur Genius Grant for her work around this idea of grit, and the idea is basically, yeah, talent matters, IQ matters, but more than talent or IQ, your perseverance and your commitment over time matter. And as I think about your career path and your work and your commitment to really trusting yourself and that you're going to continue to get closer and closer to what you want to achieve, that to me feels like a model for grit. Is that a word that you connect with?
Yes, it is. In fact, I always say I only train with royalty and the jewels in the crown are made of grit and hustle. I mean, diamonds are nice. You can give me a diamond, but I've got my own crown, baby, and I have my own diamond factory because I do it all the time when I lace up or when I'm on the peloton bike.
It comes from you.
It's self generated. Blink.
Anything that we haven't covered that you would, as you reflect on your own career, that you would want to make sure that people understood about that.
Path, say yes before you think you're ready. I see so many folks hesitant to throw their hands up to say hell, yeah, I'm gonna do that thing, simply because they haven't trained, or they haven't read about this or that. It's like, figure it out along the way. If you make it matter, you will make it happen period, and you might fail. But failure is just information. I consider failure to be like the results of a Google search and I, Okay, what am I going to learn? Got it? Moving on? So let's start to reframe those ideas, both of our own agency and our capacity to level up, but also our capacity to deal with failure. It's not as scary once you do it repeatedly.
Well, if you ever really gone for something that you haven't been able to achieve, that you've been disappointed.
By Yeah, all the time. Actually, I auditioned for a competitor in the fitness space, That's all I'll say. And I auditioned for them, I would say probably eight months before I read about Poloton and they said, you know what, you just don't got it. Sorry, it's not going to work, and that no. That's one of the most significant nos, because if they would have told me yes, I would have been in a year long, you know, noncompete with this other competitor, and who knows where they would have taken me. So I do believe in sometimes the required pivot is a blessing in disguise.
How do you come back from that note in specifically, how did you come back from that know with grace?
Well, you know what, I think that the know at that time was warranted. I probably wasn't any good, but it became a catalyst, right. I was like, Okay, nobody's gonna tell me no again in this regard. So I just got better. I believe in banging on our chest and saying damn, I got this, Like I will literally look in the mirror before I need to go for a big workout or a big performance or a big ride on the peloton and bang on my chest and look in myself in the eyes and say damn, let's go. But you also have to have enough humility to know, Okay, I've still got work to do.
That was Robin Arson. You can check her classes out at one peloton dot com and learn more about her work at Robinarzon dot com. And hey, this episode came from you listeners. During office hours, several listeners got talking about how much they love Peloton and how it'd be great to have Robin on the show. So I reached out and she said, yes, who else do you want to hear from? Let me know. Email us at Hello Monday at LinkedIn dot com. And just so you know, well, Robin leftlaw. There are many many people who find a rich and satisfying career in it, like my friend Lindsay Garrison.
Law, if you do it right, is a place where you can feel like you're making a difference in the world, where you can help people, where you can make people's lives better, and use this toolkit of cases and legal arguments and just make a compelling story and actually change people's lives for the better and.
If you could do that, you could be a really happy lawyer. Well, you're a very happy lawyer, am I right?
I never ever would have thought that I would still be at a law firm this many years after law school. But I'm still super happy.
If you like the show, please rate us on Apple Podcasts. It really helps new listeners find us. Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn. The show is produced by Sarah Storm with help from Madison Shafer. Tim Boland mixed our show. Fludencia Riando is head of original audio and video. Dave Pond is our technical director. Victoria Taylor and Juliette Farau self generate blaying out of grit and hustle every week. Our music was composed just for us by the mysterious Master Cylinder. You also heard music from Puttington Bear. Dan Roth is the editor in chief of LinkedIn. I'm Jesse Hemple. See you next Monday. Thanks for listening. When do you think we give up on zoom meetings and just go with the audio.
I know I've actually established some boundaries recently where unless it's like one on one, like I've just said, I'm going to collapse the screen and just give we're gonna go back to like I'm gonna pretend this is a rotary phone because there is like an added social pressure to it that I don't think is always helpful, especially when it's hours a day.
Well, and also it kind of kills the intimacy to some degree. There is a way that when you get rid of the obligation of looking at somebody, you can focus and concentrate on listening to them.