Treadmill meetings, spinning are Wall Street’s new steak dinners
Instead of discussing business with clients over a steak dinner or drinks, traders and other finance professionals are arranging workout ‘meetings’
Most health trends come and go, almost as soon as you’ve unpacked your cold press juicer.
The business world’s affinity for combining client meetings and workouts is getting stronger at fitness spots such as Barry’s Bootcamp, SoulCycle, and Rumble, and gyms like Equinox. The trend has been building among media relations and entertainment industry professionals in New York and Los Angeles, and bankers have slowly started to jump aboard. Wall Street is now fully engaged.
“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 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 10mph (16km/h), has seen growth in early bookings to insure side-by-side workout spots. Vicky Land, vice-president of communications and brand strategy at Barry’s, says the service comes at a premium.
“We often act as a concierge service to guarantee side-by-side treadmills. We do that quite frequently for people in finance,” she says. “We have a lot of ‘two spots’ which are people ‘sweat-entertaining’.”
The cost is US$50 per person, almost 30 per cent more than an average class.
“Everything is relationship-based these days. If you have a fun workout with a client, it’s much more impactful than wheeling and dealing over the dinner table,” she says.
Land says that the Tribeca and NoHo locations have 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,” she says. “Last year we actually got a call from a hedge fund asking if we could hold Barry’s classes in their large private gym.”
At the high intensity biking destination SoulCycle, a four-person corporate sales team accommodates demand for events and special business requests. “There are only so many steaks businesspeople 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 four hours to hit the golf course, or two hours for a boozy meal. Plus, they want to do something good for themselves, plus they get networking out of it.”