What we talked about
Suze Yalof Schwartz is the Founder and CEO of Unplug, a secular meditation studio in Los Angeles and a global meditation app built for busy people who feel stressed, anxious, distracted, overwhelmed, or unable to sleep. In this conversation, Suze shares how a simple three minute breathing exercise taught by her mother in law changed her life and sparked her 2012 quest to make meditation easy and practical for modern skeptics. She reflects on her previous career in fashion media, including years at Glamour and work with Vogue, Elle, and Marie Claire, and how that fast paced lifestyle kept her stuck in constant busyness instead of the present moment.
Show notes
Suze Yalof Schwartz spent 14 and a half years at Glamour Magazine, covering the Oscars and Golden Globes, anchoring the magazine’s do’s and don’ts section, and flying back and forth between New York and Los Angeles, before her mother-in-law taught her a three-minute breathing exercise that she says changed her life. By 2012 she was looking for a drop-in meditation studio and couldn’t find one. So she built it.
What we covered
- Unplug is the world’s first drop-in meditation studio, located in Los Angeles, and has expanded into a global app with over 1,500 meditations led by 300 world-renowned experts. It also runs teacher training in 20 countries and a corporate wellness program. Suze describes the target user as anyone who is stressed, anxious, unable to sleep, overwhelmed, or distracted, which, she notes, covers most people working in corporate America.
- Her advice to skeptics is to lose the word “meditation” entirely and call it tactical breathing, mindfulness, or a present practice instead. The actual mechanics are three steps: breathe, let go, and when the mind wanders, begin again. She says the number one mistake beginners make is believing they’re doing it wrong because they can’t clear their mind, clearing the mind is not possible and was never the goal.
- She recommends starting with 60 seconds rather than a 20-minute session, because people who attempt long sessions once and hate it rarely return. Her own practice is 10 minutes every morning before getting out of bed using the Unplug app’s meditation of the day, immediately followed by the gym. She calls this habit stacking, not giving herself a vote on whether to do it, simply doing what’s in front of her.
- When Suze first opened the studio she gave classes away for free to attract people, and found that paid members attended more consistently than people who came for free. She concluded that paying for something causes people to assign value to it and to show up to extract that value, the free version produced the opposite behavior.
- The Unplug app was designed so that her 87-year-old mother could open it and know exactly what to do. The home screen contains the entire app: a positive quote, a daily check-in with a self-discovery question and three gratitude prompts, the meditation of the day, and then all categories, sleep, meditate, movement, visible without navigating away. Suze spent nine days at Apple’s Cupertino campus through the Apple Entrepreneur Camp and credits that experience with shaping the product’s emphasis on beauty and ease.
- The most unusual meditations on the platform include a dog meditation for meditating with your pet, a breastfeeding meditation, and a hypnosis session that Suze says can get someone who never exercises to want to work out the next morning. The most-searched topics are sleep, stress, and anxiety.
About Suze
Suze Yalof Schwartz is the Founder and CEO of Unplug, the world’s first drop-in meditation studio, based in Los Angeles, and the author of “Unplug: A Simple Guide to Meditation for Busy Skeptics and Modern Soul Seekers.” She previously spent 14 and a half years at Glamour Magazine as a television expert and editor.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzeyalofschwartz
- Website: https://www.unplug.com/corporate
Episode 118 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today I am joined by Zeus Yalov-Schwarz. She’s the founder and CEO of Unplugged, a secular meditation studio, an app built to make meditation simple and accessible. Before this chapter, Zeus worked for years in fashion media at places like Lamour.
and she’s also the author of Unplugged, a simple guide to meditation for busy skeptics and modern soul seekers. Zeus, welcome to the show.
Suze (00:38) Thank you so much, Frederico. I’m happy to be here.
Federico Ramallo (00:41) I’m honored to have you here today. Tell us what is unplugged and who is it for?
Suze (00:47) UMPLUG is for busy people who are stressed, anxious, can’t sleep, feeling overwhelmed, can’t focus, distracted, and are looking for tools to help them feel present, calm, centered, and gain back the control of their brain. UMPLUG is the world’s first drop-in meditation studio located in Los Angeles, California.
And it’s also a global meditation app with over 1,500 meditations led by 300 world-renowned experts. We also have a teacher training where we help people teach meditation across the globe. We already have in 20 different countries people teaching meditation. And we have a corporate program where we teach companies how to meditate.
Federico Ramallo (01:36) Amazing, amazing. And what was your life like before meditation?
Suze (01:42) For meditation, I was very busy as a fashion editor covering the globe in fashion. I was doing what I loved. I was working for a magazine called Glamour Magazine. Prior to that, I was at Vogue, Elle, and Marie Claire Magazine. And with Glamour, I was there for about 14 and a half years as a television expert covering the red carpet for the Oscars and the Golden Globes.
and also doing the do’s and don’t section inside of the magazine. It was really fun, really hectic. I was constantly thinking about the next thing and very rarely in the present moment. And on one special day, my husband got a job offer out of the blue to move to Los Angeles and challenged me to do the same and go full-time into television. So I moved out here and…
I was flying back and forth between New York and LA and my mother-in-law saw that I was so stressed out because I had three kids here and she told me I needed to breathe. And so she taught me a little breathing exercise that changed my life. I learned how to go from stressed to calm in three minutes. And after I learned that, I asked her, what was that? And she explained it was meditation.
and told me that I should learn how to do that. So I went on a quest to learn meditation. And at the time it was very complicated. This was in 2012. And there was no drop in meditation studio where you could walk in for 30 minutes and feel better 30 minutes later, led by top teachers. And I thought, this should be happening all over the world. And then I had this idea to open up a meditation studio called Unplugged. And that’s really how it all started.
Federico Ramallo (03:31) So you were by default engaged, right? must be tiring, right?
Suze (03:39) I think most people are living in the land of busyness. Most people who are working in corporate America are juggling thousands of things at the same time. And even people who are not, moms and in this day and age, we’re constantly, our attention is scattered in everywhere, whether it’s in our phone, on our jobs, in our family life.
And it’s very rare that we’re actually sitting down, being present with ourself, noticing what’s going on in our own brains. And I think that really is the gift of unplug is the capacity to be able to be present in the present moment and really land there and slow yourself down so that you can actually do more in less time because you’re actually present when you’re doing it.
I wish I knew that when I was working in corporate America. I did not know that. Glad I had to learn it the hard way. So now I teach other people how to learn it the easy way.
Federico Ramallo (04:39) But you went through a journey of discovery that it’s very interesting because as you said, takes a lot of courage to be able to this out, this transition, right?
Suze (04:53) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (04:54) see a lot of people in in particular that go off-road to remote places to connect nature when I arrive to those places I see a lot of folks that just sit down and put music on, right? It’s like they can, I feel that it’s like they cannot stand their own thoughts, right? They need the music to kind of…
Mew their own thoughts, right? If that makes sense.
Suze (05:21) Yes, I like the way that you just put that. Mute your own thoughts. If only we could, if only we actually could. We cannot.
Federico Ramallo (05:27) Yeah
Suze (05:31) You can drown them, but you can’t mute them. So we drown them in.
Federico Ramallo (05:35) Right?
Suze (05:38) you know, looking at Instagram and TikTok and listening to music and talking to people, but you can never mute them. What happens is they’re running on autopilot. So even if you think you’ve drowned them out, they’re still going. So we have 5,000 to 80,000 thoughts every single day. That’s a lot of thoughts. Many of the thoughts that we have are negative and we don’t even know that we’re self-sabotaging. So…
The gift of meditation is really being able to pause yourself, notice your thoughts, and choose how to respond to them. Is this important to me or is this not true? And I need to let go of that thought. So until you can do that, you’re going to be stuck with them. Whether you try to mute them out or drown them out, doesn’t matter. They’re still going to be running on autopilot.
Federico Ramallo (06:30) Right. Right. one of the ways that was explained this is this idea of we see an emotion, we look at it and then we let it go. We don’t hold it. We don’t guide it. It’s just becoming an observer of those thoughts. And that kind of it’s part of a process of meditation. Right.
Suze (06:52) I would say exactly the process of meditation. It’s observing the thoughts without engaging with them. So I notice, I release. I come back to the breath. I come back to the present moment. So it’s kind of a ping pong game, I always say, between your mind trying to take you out of the present moment and you actively, by noticing the thought and replacing it to your breath or using a word on repeat like…
Federico Ramallo (06:55) Hahaha
Suze (07:21) Shom. These are the things that we do to help us get back to the now.
Federico Ramallo (07:26) Right. Right. Very interesting. And what does secular meditation mean to you?
Suze (07:34) Well, a lot of people, when they hear the word meditation, they think about religion or they think about spirituality. meditation is only religious and spiritual if you choose to make it so, but secular means non-religious. So we’re not Buddhists, we’re breathers.
So we’re focusing on our bringing our awareness to our breath. We’re bringing our awareness to the present moment and we’re not doing anything other than that other than actively being present with ourselves.
training our attention to be here now.
Federico Ramallo (08:10) So not.
Right. So not all are Buddhists, but all Buddhists are
Suze (08:21) Well, I can’t speak for all Buddhists, but I can say that a lot of Buddhists are meditators. A lot of Catholics are meditators. A lot of Jewish people are meditators. A lot of, you know, all the different religions are meditators, but they do it in a different way. Some people bring God into it. you know, I always say there’s a difference between prayer and meditation. Prayer is we’re going out.
going to our higher self, our higher being, our God. And meditation is we’re going in. Who am I? Why am I here? I’m breathing. It’s now.
Federico Ramallo (08:57) Right, It’s into a deeper with ourself, with our mind.
Suze (09:02) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (09:03) someone who’s skeptical, what is the easiest way to try meditation for the first time?
Suze (09:07) I love that you asked that question. I actually wrote a book called, Unplug, A Simple Guide to Meditation for Busy Skeptics and Modern Soul Seekers. And the reason why I wrote that is because a lot of people are skeptical and it’s for many different reasons. Some people are skeptical because they think that they don’t want to lose their edge. Some people are skeptical because they think they don’t have time or they can’t sit still.
I would say to skeptical people to lose the word meditation for one. You can call it tactical breathing. You could call it mindfulness. You could call it just a present practice. It doesn’t have to be called meditation. That word sometimes turns people off. So all we really do when we meditate is we breathe, which is step one. Step two is we let it go. We’re present in the present moment.
And step three is our mind will try to take us away from the present moment, whether it’s thinking about things in the future or remembering things in the past. And then we begin again. Breathe, let go, mind wanders, come back. Breathe, let go, mind wanders, come back. And when I say that for skeptical people, when your mind wanders and you can actively choose to come back to your breath, come back to the present moment,
That is when you are able to actually control your brain and control your thoughts and control your response. Because what most people do is something happens in their life that’s difficult and they get reactive. They get angry or they get sad or they scream or whatever it is that they do. But what they don’t do is they don’t pause and breathe. But when you see, for instance, famous athletes,
before they win major competitions like the US Open or the NBA. You’ll notice a lot of these major athletes are stopping, breathing, visualizing, and getting present, especially golfers. When the golfers are just thinking about themselves in the ball, the thing in front of them, that’s when they play their best. It’s when you get in your head,
That’s what we say, we get in our head. And that’s when you play the worst. This is what’s happening in the Olympics right now as we’re watching it. We’re seeing a lot of athletes get in their head. But what they need to do is just get in the now. Just take it, be in the now, be present. Let go of all their own expectations and be here now. And that’s when you’ll perform your best.
Federico Ramallo (11:47) you
because I compete in sports as well and when you start thinking about the mistakes that you’ve made and you kind get distracted by that, then you’re making more and more mistakes. And it’s for the mistake that you’re doing, it’s because the mistake that you’ve and that kind becomes snowball that grows and grows and grows,
Suze (12:14) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (12:14) So being able to just let go. You made a mistake, you have the next shot. be ready, be present.
Suze (12:20) Yeah,
we need…
If you think about all the mistakes and you’re in it, then you’re not thinking about being in it. You’re thinking. So this is where the problem lies and it compounds. So that’s why I can’t remember who the golfer was, but one of the golfers who won the US Open didn’t even realize he won because he was playing really present, hitting one ball at a time, not thinking about what happened, what didn’t happen.
Federico Ramallo (12:28) Right.
Suze (12:49) just kind of focusing on the next thing and the thing in front of him. So just that one shot. So if you take it one, you know, they always say, the slower you go, the faster you finish. It’s when we put too much on our plate that we can’t get anything done. But when we put one thing on our plate, we can complete that one thing and then move on to the next.
Federico Ramallo (13:11) Right, right. Let me tell you a story that I heard about this idea of realization, right? Think of a building, right, where you can see the whole floor, right? But then when you’re in a particular spot, you can see a shaft that goes to the next level, right? So if somehow you transport to the next level, right?
only by being on that particular spot.
then can see a whole different you have a friend that is on the previous floor, and you try to explain this whole new floor that you’re looking at. It’s a new level of realization that it’s frustrating because the other person doesn’t see it. So they believe you that you’re not lying to them, but they don’t really believe you because they’re not looking.
looking themselves in that the floor, right? And it is not until they get to that particular point and get get up to the next level of realization, where they can they can share that experience with you, right? And then they can say, now I understand what you’re talking about, right? And I think that it’s the same thing with meditation, right? I mean, there’s so many skeptics, skepticism, ⁓ lack of information.
And whatever it is, it is not until they experience it that they can realize the benefits.
Suze (14:43) And it’s interesting because some people are crisis meditators. A crisis happens and then they meditate to feel better and then they forget about it until the next crisis happens and then they do it again. But that’s dabbling. When you become a consistent meditator, the second the crisis comes, you know exactly what to do. And it just makes handling all of life’s challenges a lot easier.
Federico Ramallo (14:54) I’m
Suze (15:10) And unfortunately, you can’t say to people, you need to meditate or you should meditate. We know this is true. We know everybody would benefit from meditating. It’s like drinking water. It’s beneficial to your brain. We know that it changes the physical structure of your brain. It improves your functionality of your brain. But people have to get there when they’re ready to get there.
Federico Ramallo (15:36) Right, right. So showing the path and people can decide when to traverse it, right?
Very what is the biggest mistake beginners make when they try to meditate for the first times?
Suze (15:50) They’d sit down for 20 minutes and try to just sit there for 20 minutes without using a real pro. So I think the biggest mistake is people think that they can’t do it because they have too many thoughts. That’s the number one thing that we hear. People think they can’t do it because they can’t clear their mind. What they don’t realize is you’re never going to clear your mind. That’s not possible. And it’s never going to happen. So they think they’re doing it wrong or they don’t even want to sit there and
And all of a sudden they’re noticing these thoughts that are awful in their mind and they never want to go back there again. But here’s the thing, if you don’t notice the awful thoughts that are happening in your mind, they’re still there. Like we were talking about muting your own thoughts or drowning them out. They don’t go away. But if you do notice them, that’s the only way to move through them and release them. So I think the biggest mistake is doing it for too long.
So starting tiny is much better than doing it for what they think is the right amount of time because then they’ll do it once, hate it, and they’re out. But if you breathe for 60 seconds and you slow down your heart rate, you’ll feel a little bit better and then you’ll want to do it again. So would rather people do it every day for a minute a day than go on a Vipassana retreat or six-week meditation retreat or a…
Federico Ramallo (16:56) You
Suze (17:13) three-day silent meditation retreat and then never do it again. So I’d rather it be 60 seconds daily than anything else. So my sweet spot is 10 minutes every morning before you get out of bed. I believe in my own practices, I wake up, I click the meditation of the day on the unplugged meditation app, and I literally do 10 minutes of meditation, and then I get out of bed, and then I go to the gym.
And I lock those two things every morning because I habit stack them. I don’t get out of bed until I meditate. Therefore, I will never miss a day of meditation.
Federico Ramallo (17:51) Right, right. Wow, that’s amazing. I mean, I think that there are diminishing returns when you try too hard for too then being able to start with a very small amount of goals to achieve. I think that that is much more important. And as you said, recurrency, right? Being able to do it more frequently every day.
even for five minutes, 10 minutes, one minute, But being able to do it daily, right?
Suze (18:18) Yeah.
Yep, consistency always is more powerful than dabbling.
Federico Ramallo (18:28) Right. Right.
Suze (18:30) Dabblers don’t see the results,
and system meditators do. It’s just a fact.
Federico Ramallo (18:36) Right. And in the…
Suze (18:36) Don’t hate me all those dabblers watching right now, but
I’m just telling sharing the facts ⁓
Federico Ramallo (18:41) You
Right, right. Yeah, I it’s think that there’s also a component of ego, right, that we we’re fighting with our own ego to to try to control when we have to become observant of what is going on with us. And that that’s scary.
Suze (19:00) I don’t know if it’s ego so much as its choice. So for instance, if I wake up and let’s say I use the unplug app as my meditation app. There’s so many meditations apps out there. That’s just the one that works that I love that works for me. And I say, the meditation of the day, let me look around and see if I can find something better. Then I’m probably not going to meditate.
I might take too much time and then I might take a vote. Should I or shouldn’t I meditate? If I ask myself, should I or shouldn’t I, often I won’t. It’s the same thing with working out. If I’m not doing it in the morning, it’s probably not going to happen for me. So I don’t give myself the vote. I don’t give myself an option. I just do what’s in front of me and I get it done. Whether I love that one or I don’t love that one, it doesn’t matter to me. The fact that I’m doing it is what matters.
The fact that I’m showing up and being consistent and doing the thing. That is what matters.
Federico Ramallo (20:01) Right, because we can have a thousand and one excuses procrastinate and not the activity, right? and the same happens with right? I have the same issue. If I if I miss one class, I have a excuse to miss the other one. And a compounding effect,
If you’re going to every single one, you don’t want to miss the next one because you don’t want to break that it’s less likely for you to find an excuse to not once you’re there, the when I explain people about, you know, I do karate, that’s why I’m talking about my experience based on
is just showing up. If you show up, you do 80 % of the work. Then, you you have to sweat, have to do the exercise. But being there, being with other, you know, practitioners, then you have this peer pressure to kind of, you know, go along with whatever activity is and try to do, you know, because everybody has to do it exactly the same. You know, if you lag behind, it kind of shows, right? Maybe nobody says anything, but, you know, use it.
So puts you moving forward, keep doing right, wrong. You’re going to get feedback and correction, but just showing up. And everything else is But it’s much But then if I miss one then I miss the other one.
then it’s okay, I’ll serve next week. And then you start finding excuses not doing the activity, right? Which it’s kind of a way that the trick us to doing the
Suze (21:47) You miss one, you miss two, you’re off the boat, it’s done. But the key is to go show up, do a tiny little bit, and then whatever you do above that is extra credit. So keep it tiny.
Federico Ramallo (22:01) Right.
So us a little bit more about the unplugged app. What were most important features for you to build within the app why?
Suze (22:10) technically or content wise.
Federico Ramallo (22:13) Well, I think that, I mean, I’m a software engineer. I love the technical stuff, I think it’s important to understand the behaviors and the of you build the application the way you built it, right? I’m.
Suze (22:27) Okay, well
the way that I built the Unplugged Meditation app, I decided that I needed my mother who’s 87 years old to be able to open it up and know exactly what to do. And I realized like after talking to some people that most apps, most people don’t use 90 % of what’s on the app. They only use 1 % of what’s on the app or 10 % of what’s on the app. And I didn’t want that to happen with our app.
So I changed everything around to one, simplify it so I could get people to behave the way I wanted them to behave. So for instance, when you open up the Unplugged app, the first thing you’ll see in the morning is a positive quote. I think of that as first thing you feed to your brain is something positive. Then there’s three little steps that you can do to do the daily check-in. The first is you ask yourself a question of the day and the question
is something like, you know, what do I find fun? Or something where you can ask yourself something that you discover something about yourself. The next step is three things you’re grateful for. We just list three things that you’re grateful for because we know that gratitude is really incredible for your brain. And then the third step is the meditation. And the meditation of the day is right there. All you need to do is click it, lay back down, 10 minutes, you’re done. So
Those are the three behaviors I want people to do when they open up the app. A lot of people use our app to go to sleep at night. We have award-winning sleep meditation. then on the app, right underneath that, you’re going to see all the different things that we have. Sleep, meditate, movement, and the different things that we have. I literally put every single thing that’s on the app. I made it available on the home screen.
So you never have to leave the home screen. You can find everything that’s there right on the home screen.
Federico Ramallo (24:26) Right, amazing, amazing. Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of applications that are over complicated and I’ve done it myself. I built applications that have too many features that then people don’t use. So what’s the point of building them in the first place, right? So I think it’s very interesting how you were able to build an app that can’t…
be used by novice, first timers and meditators to more advanced meditators because you’re providing the core functionality right on the homepage.
Suze (25:02) And I really believe that when we went to Apple, we were very lucky to be invited to be part of the Apple entrepreneur camp. So we spent nine days on Apple’s campuses and Cupertino. And what I learned about making a great app is they want it to be beautiful and easy to use. And I believe that we have mastered both on the unplug app. It’s really beautiful and it’s really easy to use.
Federico Ramallo (25:30) Right, this is a word that it’s overused in marketing, intuitive, being able to, as you said, your mother-in-law being able to open the app, being able to use that
what features have you built for more advanced users?
Suze (25:48) So it’s interesting, we have people who’ve meditated. I mean, I’m number 10 on the list and I’m 1,800 consecutive days meditating on the app. And I’m number 10, which is pretty unbelievable. So we have people who are engaged long enough that they’re advanced meditators at this point. We have a feature.
for advanced meditators who just want to listen to music or listen to birds chirping or listen to Hertz or binaural beats called the timer, which is just audio, no guiding, unguided meditation that you can go sit for an hour and be in stillness and silence if you choose to be. You don’t have to even have sound. You could just have the bell ring in the beginning and the bell ring at the end indicating when you’re finished.
So that’s one thing. And we’ve built a lot of courses and master classes. So when people want to go a little bit deeper, they can learn from our master classes on what to do for all of life’s challenges. So we get the experts to share different master classes, which are just helping us improve our everyday lives.
Federico Ramallo (27:00) Right, very interesting. I think it’s more of an invitation to explore rather than an imposition of
Suze (27:09) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (27:10) Right, yeah, I think that that’s key because that way you can beginners, also serve advanced people because they can just go and they are satisfied with the basic features, they can go and explore advanced functionality.
Suze (27:28) Yes, and we also have a meditation for absolutely everything. So, Frederico, if you said, I’m feeling overwhelmed and you typed overwhelm in there, there’d be a meditation for that. Or if you were suffering from a disease, a specific disease, like let’s say you’re not, I hope, but cancer, we have a lot of meditations for that. Or if you’re in pain, we have meditations for that. If you’re going through a divorce, we have a meditation for that. So we definitely…
created different 10-minute videos to help people with all of their life’s challenges. And we did that with all of our different teachers based on what we were getting feedback from, from our clients, and also from our own lives.
Federico Ramallo (28:12) very interesting.
Suze (28:15) So we like to say at the bottom, we have a meditation for that. It says that at the bottom of the app, the very last thing, and it’s a search bar. And you search it, we have it. If we don’t have it, we’ll make it. So that is kind of how we roll over at Unplugged.
Federico Ramallo (28:22) Hahaha
Right. the search bar becomes a request for new meditation if you don’t have it.
Suze (28:38) Yeah, but we have it at this point. We haven’t had something that we don’t have. We have it. Whether, you you could think of the most obscure thing and I’m sure we haven’t.
Federico Ramallo (28:41) Right.
interesting what do you think are the most topics people search for?
Suze (28:53) Sleep, sleep, stress, anxiety, depression. I think those are probably sleep, stress, and anxiety I think are the most popular.
Federico Ramallo (29:07) Right. what is the most funniest topic that you found people search to meditate?
Suze (29:13) Meditate with your dog. So it’s like a doggy meditation. You and your dog can meditate together. I think that was pretty funny. I also like the breastfeeding meditation. So when you’re breastfeeding your child, there’s a meditation so you can meditate and breastfeed at the same time. You’re calm, the baby’s calm, you flow. So I mean, there’s like sex, like…
basically like get your libido back, which is like if your sex drive is low, we have a meditation that increases it. So I think those are probably some of the most interesting. Hypnosis, where you get to see your spirit animal and you can also see your past life and your future life. So you can check out your future self, the one you actually want to be. And then,
Understand what it’ll take for you to get there, to be that person that you want to be.
Federico Ramallo (30:09) that’s interesting yeah you can project what you want to achieve
Suze (30:11) And we also have a hypnosis
Yeah, and then we have a hypnosis for exercise for people who don’t exercise but they want to. We can hypnotize them in 19 minutes and the next day they’ll wake up and they’ll want to exercise.
Federico Ramallo (30:16) go ahead, go ahead.
So, a little bit of topics, you went from fashion editor to wellness founders. What skills did you carry over the most from one industry to the other?
Suze (30:36) Well, before I was making over people from the outside and now I’m making them over on the inside.
Federico Ramallo (30:43) that’s beautiful.
Suze (30:44) I think that’s the big one. Television. I do a lot of podcasts and on air like this. I did that before. I was on TV a lot in my prior job. And also just finding talent and noticing trends. That happened in my past job and that’s happening in this job.
I’m producing. I produce videos at unplug and I produced some segments at, at Glamour.
Federico Ramallo (31:03) Interesting. So what
Right. feel like now you have a lot of content on the backlog for you to produce, right? Because once the idea starts showing up, it becomes an infinite domain of to produce,
Interesting.
And what was the hardest part of starting Unplugged in the early days?
Suze (31:35) The fact that there was no other model to look at to see what worked and what didn’t. So when I first opened, I was giving away the classes for free, just trying to get people to come to the studio. people would come once and then they wouldn’t come back. I didn’t understand why that was. But actually what I realized when I started charging people, then they started showing up more.
And I know that sounds so unusual. You would think more people would come if it was free. But I think in life, when we put money on something, we place value on something. So I genuinely believe having to pay for things actually will help you in the long run because it makes you want to go and take advantage of the money that you put into it. So yeah, but when it’s free, people take advantage of things. But when it costs them something,
They want to get the full value out of it. And I think that was a big thing that I learned.
Federico Ramallo (32:31) Right, right. Yeah, I I’ve seen people, you know, when they see it free, they don’t value it as then on the other hand, I’ve gyms just planning for you not to go, which is, you of exploiting this idea value based on money, right? ⁓ But… ⁓
Suze (32:51) Well, the gyms don’t
want people not to go. They want people to go. And they’re not exploiting them. They feel like if you pay for it, you’re going to show up. But the problem is some people just do it because it’s part of their identity. They want to have the identity of that type of person, but they don’t want to do the work. And so I think that’s on the client and not on the gym.
Federico Ramallo (33:15) right.
Suze (33:20) per se, in my opinion. I do believe that some people do it just as a status thing or an identity thing. I know that I have a membership right now that I barely use, and it’s like a status identity thing, and it’s stupid. I should cancel it. I don’t know why I don’t. But after this conversation, I might. It’s not helping me in any way, or form.
Federico Ramallo (33:39) Hahaha!
Right.
Right, it symbol rather us become better, right? I’ve seen that happen as well, yeah. And the…
But it becomes a dynamic. It’s hard to go the first less hard to go the second one. And then once you kind of make it a habit, easier to go the next time and the next time and the next time, right? Because now it’s part of your
Suze (34:06) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (34:09) what do companies get wrong about wellness programs and what actually works? We’re kind of talking a little bit about this, right?
Suze (34:16) I think that companies have to understand that it’s about the employees and they need to feel the benefit. And so if they feel it, they’ll show up again and again and again. If they don’t feel it, then they won’t. I think that wellness programs need to be engaging and fun and inspirational. And sometimes people think wellness is just hard, boring, and anything but.
Federico Ramallo (34:35) Right.
Suze (34:43) see it as the more fun you make it, the more people will show up and want to do it again and again. So making it more fun, more social, and a larger ROI. So you can actually see that it is improving the lives of the employees. That, to me, is what it’s all about.
Federico Ramallo (35:01) right. In exercise.
Suze (35:01) And I think also what
companies don’t realize is that the more people take care of their health and wellness, the better they’ll be as employees. They’ll be less sick. They’ll be less angry. They’ll be less tense. They’ll be able to make clearer decisions. I mean, it really benefits a company to invest in wellness programming because it really can change the culture.
Federico Ramallo (35:06) I’ll go ahead.
Suze (35:30) and it can change the productivity of your employees.
Federico Ramallo (35:34) right, it has a benefit the employees, I agree, yeah. I think one thing that I’ve seen happening programs is don’t see the results immediately, so you need to do this leap of faith at the beginning a little while until you start seeing the changes,
it takes a while. I’m gladly surprised that with meditation you can benefit much quicker, right? And that would make people to go often, right? And stay within the program.
Suze (36:08) think that’s the interesting thing that you just said, Frederico, is that you don’t see the benefits with meditation. You feel them. Whereas with exercise, you see them, which is why so many people are much more focused on exercise because they like seeing their bodies change. But they don’t care as much about their brains, but what they don’t realize is that the brains are running the show. Your brain is running the show.
your mindset, your brain, and runs your body. So we really need to take care of our brains.
Federico Ramallo (36:43) Right.
mean, I’m making a lot of correlations with experience with Karate, right? And you achieve certain level, you kind of start from the beginning again, right? After you go to black belt, become again, right? But now a level demand that is higher, right? we’re searching for perfection on the movement, which is never achievable, right?
I’m wondering if something similar meditation.
Suze (37:09) there aren’t levels because every day you show up different. So I can walk into a meditation and let’s say it’s a 20 minute meditation and one day I could be calm, peaceful, see the purple lights in my eyes when I close them, you know, all the fun things that sometimes happen in meditation. And then another time I’ll be stressed out, have a million thoughts and like basically be battling my brain the whole time.
It has nothing to do with the level that I’m at and everything to do with how I came into the meditation. I always walk out feeling better, but I’ve never had the same meditations twice. And the difference between advanced and beginner meditations is advanced people know that they’re doing it right and sometimes they’ll sit for a longer period of time.
But that doesn’t mean that beginners don’t sometimes, mean, advanced don’t sit for a short period of time sometimes as well. So I think showing up every day makes you an advanced meditator.
Federico Ramallo (38:11) Right, right, very interesting. let me ask you one last question before we wrap it What advice would you give to a founder that is planning build an application or a based on a problem that they see in the What advice would you give
Suze (38:31) Their first hire should be a salesperson.
That is my advice. Do what you want to do. If you have an idea, go for it, make it happen. But I think the thing that’s going to make your company successful is someone who’s good at sales. So spend the money, hire a salesperson and make that happen.
Federico Ramallo (38:50) So person that could help you sell find the clients and then figure out how to deliver in the process, right?
Suze (38:59) Yes. A lot of people think, I want to build it. If I build it, they will come. I was like that. And to some degree it worked, but I think spending the money on hiring someone who’s a salesperson, who’s really good at it, I think is a great use of capital.
Federico Ramallo (39:01) amazing.
Right.
Suze (39:17) for someone starting out.
Federico Ramallo (39:18) Right.
Zeus, it’s amazing how much we learn and I truly appreciate you being here today. Any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Suze (39:29) I just want to say thank you, Frederico, and I hope that you meditate every single day from this conversation forward. Your brain will thank you. And thank you to all of the listeners who took the time to listen to us. Sharing my love about meditation, I hope that you get excited and come visit me at unplug.com. You can see everything that I do there.
Federico Ramallo (39:52) and we’re going to leave link to your studio as well people that are close by can
Suze (39:58) That would be great. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Federico Ramallo (40:01) Yeah, and I just downloaded the application, so I’m going to test it out.
Suze (40:06) Yeah,
tryers try, doers do.
Federico Ramallo (40:10) Right.
Thank you, sis.
Suze (40:13) Okay, thank you, I appreciate it. Bye.