You could say Evelyn Webster escaped a little too hard.
For more than half a decade, she was a dedicated SoulCycle rider, with the bike becoming not only a mainstay of her regular fitness regimen but also her portal into a sanctuary where she could leave the chaos of the world behind.
Webster peddled so hard, so fast, that she now finds herself out of the saddle and in the seat that matters most.
“It’s difficult for SoulCycle to be my escape now because I work there,” the CEO chuckled. “It’s my every day.”
She is still a regular at SoulCycle’s spin classes (she rides a couple times a week), but now she decompresses by reading every night before bed and by listening to podcasts while walking around New York City. (She’s tried physically meditating but laughs, “I just fall asleep.”)
On top of that, her wellness routine also includes strength training twice a week, plus a sprinkle of Pilates that she’s recently discovered; eight hours of sleep, which comes before anything else (“I will prioritize sleep over getting out of bed to workout”) and lots of protein. She munched on a fluffy ham and brie omelet—40 grams of protein—while detailing her health habits.
If all these rituals are the springs, pings and cylinders that make up Webster’s wellness lock, the key to that latch is balance.
“I can tell when I’ve not had enough sleep, when I’ve not been exercising, when I’ve been eating rubbish,” Webster told Newsweek. “I’m not on my game. I’m not as focused. I’m not as driven. I’ve learned that for me, consistency is really important.”
That consistency is what makes an effective leader, she said. Recently, she came across a metaphor that described CEOs as the weather. She reflected a lot on the idea, remembering feedback she had received very early on in her career when a colleague had told her, “If Evelyn is not feeling something, we all know it.”
“As leaders, we have to try and modify, harmonize how we are,” she said. “Organizations do not fare well under choppy weather conditions. They can’t have the sun shining one day, then a dark cloud the next.”
Wellness routine and mood aside, balance is also a hallmark of Webster’s decision-making and leadership style.
She said that in order to set up organizations for success, it’s critical for business leaders to be extremely clear about what success looks like and “where our colleagues’ roles start and end,” while still “giving them the runway to figure it out” for themselves.
“The danger is that too many leaders are not clear what success looks like,” she said. “It’s really hard for someone to be successful when you go, ‘I’m not sure what I want.’ You set them up to fail.”
Webster joined SoulCycle in December 2020, after spending more than three decades in the media industry. Prior to joining the fitness brand, she served as the CEO of Guardian News and Media’s international operation. Before that, she was the executive vice president of Time Inc.
But in some ways, it feels like she never left the business of storytelling.
While outsiders see the 45-minute indoor cycling class as just another workout, Webster understands that for SoulCycle riders, those 45 minutes feel more like a concert or a spiritual experience. And so, the story of SoulCycle is not one of a fitness company but of “an experimental entertainment business.”
In the last handful of years, former instructors, like Akin Akman and Angela Manuel Davis, have successfully turned SoulCycle into a launching pad for their careers, raking in thousands of followers, attracting celebrity clients and spinning off their own fitness programs. Now, SoulCycle is focused on building “a whole new generation of these megastars,” Webster said.
She described the hiring process as “casting” for new instructors. The team looks to acquire talent who are charismatic, can command space, have a unique story to tell and, ultimately, make “you want to be within the halo of their world.”
“It’s only if you’ve experienced their magic that you understand it’s all in the acquisition of our talent,” Webster said.
The Evelyn Webster chapter of the SoulCycle story has been a reflective one. She joined the company in the wake of a global pandemic and on the heels of controversy. COVID-19 restrictions dealt a major blow to the fitness industry, and with no one riding, SoulCycle realized that it had also scaled too quickly. Then, weeks before Webster stepped into her role, Business Insider reported allegations from riders and staff that the company enabled toxic behavior.
As a former media executive, she remembers reading all the articles. She knew that not every allegation may have been true but suspected that they were indicative of the culture at SoulCycle. When she took over, the company conducted an audit and replaced its old values with new ones. More important, she enforced those values—even at the cost of losing some employees.
“Nobody ever walked into my office and said, ‘I don’t agree with it,’ but through people’s behaviors, they demonstrated that they could not adhere to our values, and we do not accept disrespectful, rude behavior,” she said. “Values are only important if you have values that you can translate into actual behaviors.”
On a personal level, Webster herself is also deeply introspective. She runs a mental check every night at home, questioning if she could have communicated better with her team or engaged them in a more productive way. What she rarely questions are her decisions.
Webster stressed that while it’s important for leaders to be self-reflective, it can be a “disaster for any leader” if that thinking begins slowing down their team.
“If you’re constantly second-guessing yourself or thinking how something is going to land, then you’re going to slowly start to self-doubt or making compromised decisions or not making decisions at all,” she said.
That’s not to say that Webster doesn’t ever make wrong decisions, but when she does, she tries to own up to it and move forward.
“It takes a lot of confidence to say, ‘I own the decision that I made. It’s not the right one, but it’s okay because we’re going to turn and go in this direction,’” Webster said.
She fears that leaders don’t talk about their vulnerabilities enough, and, by failing to do that, could deter aspiring leaders who feel pressure to always be confident in their decisions.
Instead, she encourages leaders to act as “mirrors” for the incoming slate of executives. Webster does this in conversations with her own mentees. Rather than giving them pep talks, the CEO plainly tells them, “You would not have achieved as much as you have if you were not capable, so what makes you doubt you’re capable of doing the next thing you want to do?”
Webster will join Newsweek at this year’s inaugural Women’s Global Impact forum. The August 5 event, hosted at Newsweek‘s headquarters in New York City, will bring together some of the world’s top female executives and connect them with rising stars across industries and job functions.
For more information on the event and entry guidelines, please visit the Women’s Global Impact homepage.
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