Eat the rich: Nobody skewers the finance bro like this Boston fitness instructor

You’ve seen “PE Guy” on Instagram. Meet Wellesley’s Johnny Hilbrant Partridge as he prepares to launch a PE Guy podcast this month.
Due to his role, his following is substantial. Yeaaaaah, it’s decent. Very kewl, my man.
And if you’re one of “PE Guy’s” devoted Instagram or TikTok followers, you just read that in his gratingly smarmy voice and envisioned his oh so punchable face.
“Literally. His face is so punchable,” Johnny Hilbrant Partridge, aka PE Guy — that’s private equity — tells me with a laugh from his home in Wellesley.
That smug face is a Snapchat filter. That voice sounds like an even-more-annoying Jiminy Glick. And they’ve both helped change the Boston-based fitness instructor’s life drastically in 2025, launching Partridge from complete unknown in March to bonafide social media star: our favorite rich-dude-we-love-to-hate.
Because you know this guy or you’ve met this guy or always get stuck talking to this guy. Maybe you’ve dated this guy or you work for this guy (or you are this guy), and you are here for his roast.
He serves up eat-the-rich humor that we “normies,” as PE Guy would put it, are salivating for — especially these days.
“Where do you guys summer? Oh! You don’t summer! You just stay put … Very kewl.”
“Oh no, this is not our first time in Ireland … We’ve been here multiple times. We’re big world travelers.”
“I noticed you looking at my shoes. So they are Loubitains with the red bottoms.”
“I’ve never had Dunkin’ Donuts before. I typically have a single-origin Columbian roast.”
“Are you guys talking about Taylor Swift? Oh, she’s a business woman through and through. I know one when I see one.”
I first fell in love with the character when my cousin sent me a video this past spring. At the time, PE Guy felt like an IYKYK thing.
Suddenly, Partridge was in Business Insider, embraced by the very demographic he was roasting. Then, suddenly, he had merch featuring his signature words and phrases: “Due to my Role” and “Decent” hats are sold-out (he’s restocking) and coming soon: “Substantial” hats and hoodies.
Partridge, who still teaches fitness classes at Barry’s gym in the Back Bay and Back Bay’s SoulCycle, is now in the process of launching a Due to My Role podcast.
He tells me it will launch sometime this month, with guests to include CNN’s Jim Acosta, and entrepreneurs.
Side note: On Saturday, he’ll post a collab video with PE Guy fan/celeb real estate broker Ryan Serhant — just as “Owning Manhattan” season 2 drops Friday on Netflix.
Partridge tells me he’s also been approached by TV writers for a possible series. (Would watch.)
His Instagram followers snowball by the day. Example: When I first reached out to interview him, he had just under 200K. When I interviewed him, he had 208K. As I write this, he has 212K. Scratch that — 213K. And by the time you read this, that number may be larger.
Comments on various posts: “I detest this guy, but that’s why I can’t stop watching!”
“Dude I love you and hate you at the same time!”
“I used to be a nanny and this is why I quit LMAO.”
“Absolutely unbearable. 10/10.”
“This is one of the greatest character studies in internet history.”
So who is Partridge, my man?
Partridge, 36, grew up in Winnetka, Ill., outside Chicago, and graduated from the University of Denver in 2012 with a degree in general business.
He moved to Boston in 2016 for SoulCycle; he was then a full-time instructor. Today he teaches two classes a week at Barry’s and one a week at SoulCycle. Due to his role as an Instagram star, those classes are “definitely more full, which is amazing.”
He lives with his husband Justin Partridge, an oral surgeon, and their two golden retrievers, Sammy and Maggie, in Wellesley.
“It’s funny because people say, ‘Show us Wifey!’ And I’m like, ‘I really can’t,’” Partridge says with a laugh. “I get a kick out of the fact that there might be some people out there whose heads would fall off if they found out that they were laughing so hard to a gay guy’s stuff.”
This all started innocently enough.
In March, Partridge, 36, posted a video of “guy you get stuck talking to at a holiday cocktail party.”
“I’d been going to weddings and felt like I was getting stuck talking to people I didn’t want to talk to — they wanted to talk at. They want to talk at about how successful they are. I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna post a video of this kind of guy, and see how it resonates.’”
Oh, it resonated.
“It blew up overnight. The next morning, it had around 70,000 views. I thought, ‘It’s probably a fluke, but I’ll try again.’ Three days later, I posted similar content, and it happened again,” he tells me. “I started developing the character a little bit more, gave him a family and job. And here we are, nine months later.”
So who is PE Guy, bro?
For the uninitiated, PE Guy is Partridge’s character on Instagram and TikTok.
Though the unnamed PE Guy might pop up anywhere from Palm Beach to Chicago, there’s a major New England storyline.
We’ve learned, from various videos, he’s a Harvard undergrad and Harvard Business School alum whose “primary res” is a brownstone on Comm Ave.
Tennis-playing “Wifey,” a Brown alum, isn’t “working any more. Doesn’t really have to due to my role.” (There are hints that she’s having an affair with the tennis pro or multiple tennis pros.)
Their kiddos — 4-year-old Tarantino, 2-year-old Montauk and 9-month Ebitda — are enrolled in the most prestigious schools and camps in the country.
And well, I’ll let him introduce himself:
His PE firm is “in the process of rolling up boutique fertility clinics. Started with one out in Chestnut Hill. Place absolutely prints money, man,” he tells us in a faded red Harvard cap, and Patagonia fleece vest.
“We’re still at the club, yup. The Country Club in Brookline. It’s old money … Not like that crypto-cowboy in Needham energy … Weekends in the summer, we’re on Chappy. Chappaquiddick, yeeeah … We belong to Edgartown Golf Club as well. I saw Brady there once. We didn’t even talk football, man. We just talked Japanese denim …”
He’s a world traveler.
“Due to my role, I am able to take two weeks off for a little Euro trip with wifey and the kiddos… We’ve been in Switzerland, France, as well as Italy,” he says, sipping an espresso (he’s an aficionado). “I like to not stand out as an American. I like to blend in with the culture.”
The kiddos are soaking up foreign foods and languages — his 9-month-old’s first word was in Mandarin, and is slowly weening off breast milk flown in from the South of France.
“So the kiddos are in Dexter Southfield … I don’t want to get into the numbers, but I will tell you it’s a combined total of $200K a year, for their tuition.”
He loves bourbon. “Very few people know that bourbon, it can taste like quiet snowfall … This is good. It’s not the best I’ve had — it’s one of the best I’ve had in the States.”
PE Guy rode in the Head of the Charles in an alumni boat, he tells us, wearing a Harvard pullover, in a video in front of his brownstone on Comm Ave. That’s “the primary res. But we keep a little farm out in Weston — not so little, 12,000 square feet … The house is actually Patrick Ahearn. Patrick is a dear friend of mine, and he’s a magician with cedar shake.”
The growth is decent
If you scroll back to March, you can watch PE Guy’s evolution. It’s like watching “The Simpsons” season 1 Homer morph into season 30 Homer — an over-the-top caricature of the original sketch.
When I mention that the voice has slowly evolved into an even smugger Jiminy Glick, he laughs.
“Yes! I am obsessed with Jiminy Glick. My friend — who I send Jiminy Glick stuff back and forth with — said: “You realize this is Jiminy Glick-adjacent.”
As for that punchable face?
“My friends and I, back in the day, used to send funny Snapchat filters. Then we felt too old for Snapchat, but I’d still go on every once in a while to put a filter on my face and send it in a text. This was the first time I took that filter and posted it on Instagram.”
Partridge was raised never to talk about money. “Growing up, I was taught it’s a personal, private matter. I think we’ve lost that as a society. I’d love to go back. I don’t need to know what your salary is. I don’t need to know that at all.”
He will say he’s on track to make more money this year from PE Guy than he ever earned as a fitness instructor.
“It was never supposed to be a business, but it’s become a full-time job. I’m completely shocked. I think my husband was convinced that I was finished contributing to the household financially,” he says with a laugh. “So he’s like, ‘What the heck?’”
Pre-PE Guy, Partridge had 7K Instagram followers. Today, sprinting toward the quarter million mark, he puts in 5-7 hours a day “for PE Guy stuff — between meetings, writing scripts, making cameos, making videos, editing videos, editing cameos.”
Private equity firms — who love getting roasted, evidently — hire him on Cameo, companies want collaborative reels for ads.
“PE guys love it. On Cameo, I do birthdays, roasts, bachelor and bachelorette parties. I’ve told someone his wife is pregnant. I’ve asked people to be in weddings. Then there’s the ‘My husband is your character. Here’s a list of all the ridiculous stuff he does and says. Roast him. He loves you.’ I haven’t had a lot of backlash at all from anybody in private equity. I feel lucky.”
From Connecticut to Cambridge, the material is substantial
Followers also love it when he mentions their towns, he says.
For his Nantucket bit, he’s standing in front of what looks like a shingled Nantucket home out of central casting, urging you to get a “Gripah at Cisco” and hit up The Gazebo. “I’ve been coming here for years. Got a compound out in ‘Sconset … Oh, you’re just here for the day? Yeah, it’s expensive to stay. Oh bummer, man! … Oh, day trip! Oh shoot, man.”
The Cape: “Good morning from Cape Cod, yeah. The cape. We’re typically not on the mainland. It’s a decent enough area. We’re typically on Nantucket as you guys are well aware. We’ve got quite a compound there. We’re here in a rental. It’s decent enough.”
In Rhode Island, he’s in Watch Hill: “Well it’s discreet here … Wifey’s family’s been summering in Watch Hill for over a century, so … It was really easy for us to get into the Misquaumicut club, so … Tarantino does the sailing club at Weekapaug Yacht Club in the mornings. And the house overlooks Taylor Swift’s house. So.”
His life priorities are nicely summed up here: “Hey, good morning from Boston’s Back Bay … I do notice I’ve got people around me taking note of my Rolexes, my multiple vehicles, all the travels I do … I want to explain, I do private equity. I went to Harvard and HBS, Harvard Business School as well. I just wanted to explain to normies … the goal is to make as much money as humanly possible. And that’s reflected in my lifestyle and my Wifey’s lifestyle … and we never apologize for that.”
If you’re a fellow poor like me, you’ll find yourself Googling places he mentions (Agnes Irwin) or cars (Grenadier) or various billionaire boy clubs or destinations (Zermatt, the Cotswolds).
The Cotswolds — a picturesque region in southern England, for those who don’t know — is where PE Guy “typically does Thanksgiving,” he tells us, wearing his Harvard cap and a scarf. “We’re not doing turkey, it’s a little too pedestrian for us … We’re flying in a hand-foraged … Cornish hen.”
Nantucket is one of his favorite local spots to skewer, Partridge tells me.
“As somebody who didn’t grow up going to Nantucket, I’m fascinated how people are so obsessed and territorial with it,” he says, adding Nantucket videos get great crowd reactions.
“People say ‘Oh my gosh. Everyone does this. It’s so annoying!’ or ‘Thank you so much for calling this out.’ It’s refreshing when someone says: ‘Everybody does this, and it’s so annoying.’ People have said, ‘You did Nantucket, now do Martha’s Vineyard.’”
From Connecticut to Cambridge, New England is serving up prime material.
“In terms of prestigious schools, golf clubs and vacation areas — I’m in a great place for that. People going to Kennebunk, the Cape, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Connecticut, the Berkshires,” Partridge says. “There’s so much potential.”
On his to-do list: Block Island, Newport, the Seaport, and a return to Boston proper. One place he hasn’t done: Wellesley.
“I should do a Wellesley one, but I didn’t want to move to Wellesley and then not play nice with my neighbors,” he tells me, then pauses. “But also people, for the most part, aren’t offended. They’re like, ‘You did my city!’”
When he’s out at parties or weddings now, he’s always soaking up new information.
“But people are a little more careful around me,” he says.
At his step-brother’s wedding recently, a bunch of PE guys approached him to offer up lines. Another guest, not in PE, approached and started joking with the group. “He said, ‘Do you know that guy on Instagram who does the PE Guy stuff?” They said, “That’s him!” He was like, “No way.” I had to prove it to him, because of the face filter.”
In fact, that face filter is one reason he’s turned down repeated inquiries for in-person private events, he says.
But soon, fans who tune into the podcast will hear both his voices.
“I think the first half will be a parody of a Jiminy Glick-style interview, and the second half will be me [genuinely] talking with the guest,” likely a business owner, Partridge tells me.
“There’s nothing worse than launching a podcast and having it flop. But if that happens, I could do a funny bit about it.”