Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 399 - Ryan Duey - Cold Water and The Power of Confronting Hardship

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

Ryan Duey was born and raised in Northern California. He attended Cal Poly University, where he spent a semester abroad in Barcelona. The experience was so impactful that after graduation, Ryan returned to Spain and spent the next two years living and working in Madrid. After Madrid, Ryan returned to the States and began working in the front office of the San Jose Earthquakes. Soon after, Ryan had what he calls his "greatest gift": a head-on motorcycle accident in Thailand. This near-death experience catapulted Ryan into a journey of self-inquiry, leading him to the jungles of the Amazon, the inside of a float tank, and a commitment to entrepreneurship in the Health and Wellness industry. Ryan is now the CEO of Plunge, the makers of cutting-edge cold plunge tubs and saunas. Plunge: https://plunge.com/⁠   Today's Sponsors:  AG1:Subscribe today to try the Next Gen of AG1 for less than $3/day! If you use my link, you'll also get a FREE gift with your first order. So make sure to check out ⁠https://DrinkAG1.com/clearedhot⁠ to get started with AG1's Next Gen and notice the benefits for yourself. That's ⁠https://DrinkAG1.com/clearedhot⁠. Stopbox USA: Listeners are getting 10% off their entire order when you use the code "clearedhot". And right now, StopBox is also running a deal on their most popular bundle — the 2-pack, which saves you over 30% and comes with free accessories and shipping. That's 10% off and a big bundle discount when you use code "clearedhot" at ⁠https://stopboxusa.com⁠. Discover a better way to balance security and readiness with StopBox.

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that is drinkag1.com slash cleared hot to continue your year on a healthier note. Directlinked is in the show notes below. Back to the show. Yeah, but that's my son. And then he's like day trading. Every morning he will set his, he's in there. He's got special computer glasses that I don't think do anything. He's got his headset for white noise and he's just studying and he has all this stuff.

It's an emotional roller coaster. Yeah. So how does he, has he gotten bit yet? Yeah. By the market? He didn't tell us. He was nine grand down at one point, which for, did he tell you that yet? No.

Yeah, he left that out of his story. So funny. They play chess together. Apparently, they're doing stock competition. Do you get your inside info from him? No, I haven't gotten anything from him. I'm all, it's all my own. I wouldn't call it inside info.

I'd call it info. But he was down. Let me tell you, he's a penny pincher. So he admitted to my wife and I that he got down. It was somewhere between eight to nine grand, which for him, I'm surprised. he wasn't in the hospital with like a heart attack, but he worked his way out of it. And then, so I guess if he realized it, he would have gotten bit, but he never realized the losses and just worked his way out of it.

I do worry, though, because we have conversations about how he's, he understands the market. And he gets real upset when it doesn't respond, people are not being rational. So, I mean, I laugh at all this. I don't have a clue what he's up to. but he's going to be okay. He's one of those kids. He's going to be just fine. That DNA right there.

He'll end up changing the world. The biggest thing I know he's going to be okay when he knocks on the doors and he gets told no, he's like, oh, okay, do you know any neighbors that might want their windows done? Doesn't care. Just a no to him is just an avenue

to a yes down the road. Doesn't care. That would be the, we were talking about that actually last night at dinner and it was, if I was like an 18 to 20-year-old, I'd say the number one job is like, go do some door-to-door sales. Like, go get told 99 out of 100 times.

Totally. get used to that rejection. And confront people face-to-not confront them, but engage them face-to-face, knock on their door, in their domain where you're not comfortable and make eye contact and give them your best pitch in the moment

because it's going to get better. Every no you get is like the marble, right? And they're just chiseling away before. At this point, now he targets particular neighborhoods and it will just go for an afternoon and come back with thousands of dollars in business. Incredible. And tell me that he's grinding.

He'll do a two-hour job in the morning. Dad, I'm grinding. I'm just like, I'm going to kill you. You're doing great. Is he hanging the lights himself? Or is he now have a team that's out? Oh, no, he can't. His profit margin would go down.

He's not down for that. He tried to legitimately, Michael worked with him. What was the first offer he pitched to you? 15%. No, I don't know if that ever, well, that didn't ever came to fruition. But it was ridiculous. Although I was like, no, I'm not doing that. And just so you know, it was way lower than that before I talked to him.

He was basically going to just try to pitch. How about a 95-5 split? He will keep 95 and the other guy can keep 5. That if he sells it or puts him up? He didn't care. Go do something. I'd take 95. Yeah.

I'm like, Tyler, you might have a hard time finding employees. Like, why don't you give him 40? How about this? Let him create an affiliate because he goes to school in Bozeman. You start one there. Michael runs one up here. Take less of a scrape. But then in the aggregate,

going to be more, no, he doesn't want any of that. He's, he's a margin, man. Yeah. He'll learn. If you want scale, he's going to have to give up a little. Well, you would know. How'd you end up building a business? Well, this one was out of, kind of out of a COVID scenario.

We were, so I had, yeah, so we had, before plunge, we had, I had a brick and mortar, like, health and wellness business. We had float tanks, or we still have it, float tanks, saunas. How'd you get into that? And this is in Sacramento? Yeah, we have two locations in that region now. I got into float tanks. I mean, if I want to go way back, I was in a pretty serious accident about 13 years ago.

What type? Motor bike accident, Thailand, head-on collision, pretty catastrophic injury, but also just big moment in my life, obviously. Big, you know, road to recovery in the hospital out there about three weeks. came back, shifted a lot of some things I wanted to go after in life. Well, one of those was like, I got it started to get in a float tank. And I started floating. I was like, this was back in, yeah, 2012, 2013. So this was pretty fringe still.

Do you remember how you heard about them? Because I have, I'm not going to say I have a lot of experience in float tanks. But for whatever reason, they caught my attention years ago as well. And I was in Vancouver of all places, Canada. And they had a facility there. And I went a couple times. They're the brothers that started it up there. What's the name of that place?

Yeah, Vancouver. I almost think it's called float. I don't know. We're talking years in the rear view. It's interesting. The first hour, the very first time you go, that's tough. It's like, it's such a mind trip for like,

because your brain wants to connect to some external. Like we always have some, obviously, when the sun's in the sky or these subconscious things that are happening, and you get in there in your first time, you know, it's like five minutes in, you're like, have I been in here for three hours? You got the wax earplugs jammed in there. Totally.

You're like, where does the water begin? Where does it end on my body? Am I relaxed? Is somebody else in here with me? Who's talking to me? And then it's like, they forgot about me. Like that process happens. Like, I'm not going to be able.

Am I going to get out of here? I was going to say, did you consider it all whether or not you remembered how to get out? 100%. And where I was going at that time was a place in San Francisco. And it was like a basement facility. And they had the old Samaddi tanks. I don't remember those little hatches that you crawl in. They're not like, I mean, they're true coffin styles.

It's like Glenn and Lee Perry, this infamous couple, created these like 40 years ago with what's the original, you know, float tank guy, John Lilly. So they built these things and these were kind of the tanks of the industry for 40, 50 years. It hatch, you crawl in, you have maybe this high above you and you're kind of in there and it's just like a full. But they had like you walk into a room like this almost down in a basement and there was like four tanks. It felt like like a vampire layer.

It was like, there's your pot and go get in. And I thought it was the cool shit in the world. I was like kind of at this place of, I thought this was like, who was doing this? Not many people. Not many people, but I was blown away, which shocked like kind of shocked me. Was I'm in there, I'm thinking I'm going to see

the crazy hippie, this, you know, the whatever, psychonaut. And it was like a lawyer. It was a, like, very normal people. We're just coming in to do it. And I was like, wow, maybe this isn't like as wild as I thought this was. And so I started floating and changed, had a huge impact on my life. And fast forward a few years later, I was like, I want to start my own and brought it, opened one in Sacramento.

What trajectory were you on before that accident? What did you think your life was going to look like? You know, it was like, born and raised in Kelly? Born and raised in California. I went, moved into Europe for a few years, came back, got involved. I was super into soccer. And so I was worked in major league soccer, worked for the San Jose earthquakes, fun time. I loved working for the organization. It was fun. I was good at it and it was Sacramento has an NLS team? I was in the Bay Area. So I moved to the Bay Area. Is that profitable at all in the U.S.? Soccer? Yeah. It's, so the franchises are probably growing in value faster than any league right now. It's there some franchises are profitable now. I'd say about half the league is profitable. When I was there, most of the league wasn't.

But now their expansion fees are crossing 500 million for a team. Is it growing in popularity in the U.S.? Attendance-wise? All metrics are looking really good. You know, and soccer in the U.S. is unique because, like, we're so used to having the best league in the world. Like we have the best, you know, basketball league. We have the best, you know, baseball.

We have the best, you know, obviously football is not really international sport, but these things are, we're used to having the best. It is dope that we play the World Series and invite nobody else in the world. Exactly. World Series for, yeah, you got maybe two countries, Canada and the U.S. Yeah, we're missing a few. 100%. I ask because I'm recently seeing, and this is because the women's NBA All-Star Game just came,

and they were wearing T-shirts that say, pay us what you owe us, I believe, paraphrasing slightly what it said. And I get it. They're talking about the salary difference between the WNBA and the NBA. And, man, it's a fascinating conversation because a lot of people, yes, there is a huge difference, but a lot of people don't realize the WMBA has operated at a loss since it existed. It is basically propped up by the NBA. And, yeah, they need to get people to start paying attention and actually want to go and spend

their money. Because some people did the math breakdown, and it's like, you actually owe money, not the other way around. I mean, they've been subsidized by the NBA. It is 100% subsidized by the NBA. So there were so many years. I have a bit of opposites. I think there's... For clarity, I want it to be successful.

I'm really glad that that league exists. The question for me that I think is more important because people like, we need to get incentives to get people into the seats and this, that or the other. My question is, why do you need incentives? Like, let's look at the reason maybe why people aren't as attracted to this and maybe fix that issue if it's possible. Yes, there's a pay gap, but there's also an income.

gap as well. There's a, I mean, there's a lot. I mean, there's companies and sports teams operated a loss for a while. So that's like, that's kind of a, I don't think it's the end story. I do think it's the first time in the history of the league that the players have some leverage. Yeah. And they just signed a massive TV deal. They signed a massive TV bill. They're about to come out of their collective bargaining agreement there. They haven't resigned it. So to me, it's like, of course, this is how it goes. Do they deserve half, half million dollars? salaries. I mean, Caitlin Clark's making $75,000 on a rookie contract. Like, obviously, Caitlin has so many other deals that she gets. Yeah, she's doing all right on the sponsorship

side. She's doing incredible. And good for her. But she, like, I would argue, like, 75K, like, is, like, that's ridiculous. There should be some scale of. What do you base it on, though? You know, and that's, that's a tough one into, like, what the league, like, for example, I'll take the MLS. MLS has a very unique salary cap structure. They have. a salary cap, but then they have all these mechanisms where you can pay over the salary cap. And you can have, they have the designated player rule. So you can bring in three guys. That's why David Beckham came. And you can pay them, Leonel Messi's here. You can pay them extraordinary amount of money that go over the cap. And so that's an owner's discretion.

The owner gets to say, I am making this investment and I'm going to pay Messi 20 million a year, even though our caps, 10 million a year. Yeah. Where the WMBA could make an argument that that's a place that they want to go. And that's an owner discretion because now they're paying out of pocket. I like that's not that's like one step and I think there's some creativity they could do I think the players I have a ton of opinions I think on the WMBA and what they're doing wrong some things they're doing right I do think this is their moment of leverage where they go any new contract it's like you're going to fight for every penny you can get how you message it sometimes I think is the wrong message but I think it's their moment to fry and get a few more dollars in the values of the franchises where I think their argument is is the values of the franchises have gone

up significantly. So from an owner's perspective, they're operating from a loss, but the value creation that's been made is their argument. So there's some middle ground. I do think they'll get some level of an increase, but it'll be interesting to see where they go. I hijacked you. So you were in major league soccer. Where were you born originally? I was born in Sacramento. So, yeah, grew up right there in suburbs of Sacramento, say very, very, really comfortable in the Summertimes. Dude, 100, 108. And, you know, good.

But, you know, the thing they say that's when you got up to foothills up to Tahoe. It's a dry, it's a dry heat, you know? That's the, my experience, it's just heat. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, grew up there, pretty straightforward, simple life, same home, stable household, parents, same job, you know, did that. And then I went to college down south.

What was you got to college for? Went to college. I ended up graduating in agro business management. I went to college I went to college because I I think it was the classic like had the opportunity to didn't quite know what I wanted to do

there wasn't a real structure and class of tale for yeah like where what I was going to do I was good at school and it was it was a structure for me to go I got into Cal Poly's a really good school I was like that's where I'm going to go kind of went sight unseen never visited it

just showed up there and yeah had a really good experience you know studied abroad while I was there which had a big impact on me, and then I moved back to Spain after college. And that was like a pretty transformative time for me to learn the language, get outside of my, you know, I was on a track. I was on a very, grew up in the same town. Like I was on this kind of subconscious track that I didn't realize I was on.

A lot of people are on that track. I think we all are. I'm on it right now to some degree. And like, and that was a big one to get off and be like, what do I like to do? And that's when soccer like totally took over my life. And I fell in love with the sport out. I was living there during Barcelona's heyday with Chavi and Iniesta and Rinaldo was playing messy so anyways I was I was super into that move back to the

States got into MLS and to the original question of like the float tanks like life was good I was living in the Bay Area working for pro sports team had some like opportunities in front of me and then I get in this like accident and it was like like everything accelerated where it was like dude what the fuck do you want to do like these things that I think lived in my head of the future of what I wanted to go do, like, totally came laying in that hospital bed and it was just like, it happened quick. It was like, what do you, like, what are you putting off? Like, you have just the, what are you going to do? So I came, I left that hospital, got into a float tank, changed my life, went down to the Amazon,

started working with ayahuasca, and that was like, it was all happened within a year. You're not a shaman, are you? I'm not a shaman. I do not play a shaman. I will never, What's your ayahuasca name? Ryan. No, you know it's just like Ryan, father of the forest beans or some shit like that. I got a lot of opinions on that crew, too. I have had so many of my previous colleagues go down there, and it has had such tremendous impact, but I've also watched people get lost in the process.

100%. And they go there, and I'll be honest, they come back so enlightened that they're insufferable. Oh, it's the ego trap that comes with that of... Isn't it supposed to be ego destroying? Well, it is, and it is, it's like the ego does, I think, in the experience itself, it does happen. Like, you will go through to the brink and everyone's different. It's very unexplainable. I have zero experience.

Most of the case it terrifies me. There's no real language for what's going on in that space for my experience. But you come back and the ego as a human, that's just what we have. We have an ego. It's important to do things and it comes back stronger. And, you know, if you, I've. my take is sometimes those experience get taken to literally. Like you go in and you do get this quote unquote God state or I am like an incredible being

and like which is awesome to feel. Yeah. And like there's a lot. There's eight billion other people and you're just a human and you don't mean shit. And there's like a lot. There's a paradox to the whole process. From what I've heard people describe it as it's a very existential out of body experience. I've never heard somebody describe it like you just did.

where the danger is in taking that experience, which is anything but literal, literally. Yeah, that's not necessarily the best recipe coming home from that. It's like taking your dreams and saying they're real. And it's an, like they're, that's the closest I can come to it. Sometimes they're so bizarre, they're so.

And, you know, there's so much I've like, real applicable growth that I've had from it of my parents and I's relationship, just like, my, like love of myself and my acceptance of child, all these things that are just important for like, I think, a human evolution. And then there's moments where I'm like, okay, that, that just happened. And I can, like, I can make the aliens mean the biggest, like, you have an alien experience.

And I'm like, I don't know if that's real. I don't know. Like, to make that a literal statement, I think, I don't think brings much value to me. So I've had, that's where I kind of separate. Yeah. It's like, what is the growth that I'm getting from this and leave the, you know, some of the experiences that I can't quite. explain they're not there to say they're not real either like i'm just kind of like that's not my as a human i'm not here to i don't really understand that the wildest is when people go to those

dreamlike experiences take them literally and then feel qualified to describe to other people what their experiences should mean to them and to me i sit back and i look at this and again zero experience whatsoever i heard a lot of people talk about it like that's again yeah slippery slope walking on a razor blade and also what level of hubris do you have to have to think that you are the anointed one to be able to tell people what was going on in their mind which you weren't able to see an experience for yourself what it should mean to them like you're at a 10 sir I need you to four you know let's take a wrap up hunter I mean it's where I've got even gotten I just obviously said I worked with I it's like I've you I utilize psychedelics I've been pretty

hesitant as of more as they've gotten mainstream because there's been these different avenues of people that have used them in a way. So I'm a little hesitant sometimes to say I use them because they're great tools in my life, but they're equally, you know, their tools. Like not everyone uses the same tools. There's different avenues to go for different growth mechanisms and different. We'll talk about what you do now, the sauna cold plunging thing, right? Completely different, even though I guess you could probably have a psychedelic experience in either of those, if you stayed in either too long. I watch people get lost in that process too. Like I definitely want to talk about what you're building now and where you're going. But I literally will watch people.

with morning routines that are ungodly. They're hours long, and they have become lost in their routine instead of making their routine work for them. Any tool can be, it's in the hand of the person wielding it. I mean, it's like at the core, I think we're building these routines to make us more resilient, to make us more, you know, effective in our life. Yeah. And then when the routine, we become victim to the routine.

Or defined by the routine. Totally. And that's like, we see, totally. And I see it a lot. obviously a coal plunging and saunas and what we do are like ritual tools. Like that's what they're products that create ritual and we love that. And there's this world of like if I don't get my perfect sleep. If I don't wake up at this time and get my 30 minutes of breath work with my cold plunge with my life can't go on.

Yeah, exactly. Like you're then you're wrecked and now my wearables telling me I get the feedback that my HRVs down. And then you're in a self-fulfilling loop of I sick. Do you know how you fix that one? You take that off. You take that off. I actually had, I used to wear an Apple Watch and I did, Michael and I both do Jiu-Jitsu and I wore a whoop for a bit. And it was the same thing.

I was targeting. I wanted to have a better mathematical understanding of my metrics. But I caught myself on days where it's like, hey, you should take it easy. Your numbers aren't great. You can talk yourself into that. And oftentimes I didn't feel like the number that I was looking at. And I, in my mind, I was having this argument of like, well, I should probably listen to the science. And it became too much.

And also after, it probably depends on the person and how deep you go. But after three to six months, I could guess to a very high level of accuracy of what it was going to say. And then I just didn't want it on me all the time. I actually would prefer to go back to analog. I know when I slept well. I know when I ate like shit. Because I was the one stuffing it in my face. Like last night, we went to the movies.

I ate several pounds worth of salt in popcorn because that's what you do in the movies. And you wake up and you're like, my fingers don't work. I don't need to watch to tell me that. Totally. I'll like to wear it once a month a year and like kind of get a baseline of like where, I guess my HRV is kind of what the zone is right now. But yeah, it's definitely first thing in the morning I wake up. Did I sleep good?

I don't know. Dude, check it with yourself. I was just going to say, check in with yourself. And honestly, I know you can turn off all the alerts on the watches and stuff like that. But that also defeats a little bit of the purpose. And I didn't like the fact that was constantly getting alerts on my wrist. So I just, I switch back to just a straight analog watch. And honestly, it's a way better experience from me.

So you were getting the text messages, the whole thing. I would throttle some, you know, but like, oh, just give me my summary, right? You'll lie to yourself. Don't give me text right away, unless it's these 57 people that are in your contacts. Give me a summary every four hours. And you're sitting here like scrolling on a watch, a one inch screen trying to, what are we doing? Totally. Yeah, totally.

I have not gone the, even though we are like building at Plunge, we are actually building this specific feature right now. But here's the thing. Use the tool. Don't let the tool use you. And one of the big things that got me to take that watch off is I'd be sitting, having a conversation, not on a podcast, but even though it would happen, dinner with my wife and you feel your watch vibrate, the urge to disconnect from the person you're talking with,

just for a second, is it is enough to completely shatter whatever it is you might be sharing or talking about or interrupting a train of thought. I didn't like it. Yeah. Even though I knew I could turn them off. But if it does for whatever, like, you know, my kids all can call through. I have my phone silence, but they can call through, which I've told them, but still, they just call nine times if I don't answer the phone. Dad, where's the milk?

I'm like, I don't know, probably the fridge. Hang up. You really abuse that. Like, you're in trouble. I know. Like, if I'm not answering the phone, I'm, first off, we also share Life 360. You know I'm in the studio. You can take a guess as to what I'm doing.

But, man, I hated that. And you see it. And it's something once I recognize my distaste of how it made me feel and my willingness to distract myself from who I was sharing time with, you see it in other people because you'll see the watchlight up. Most people cannot stop themselves from detaching a little bit of looking down. Do you, how do you combat obviously text everywhere? You've gone analog there. What about your phone? What mechanisms do you have to?

I leave it on silent and I check text messages. I will, I have it. So if I look at my lock screen, it'll give me just the wave tops. And if it's important or something critical, I'll get back to it. If not, I'll respond maybe two or three times a day. And I just force myself to just put it down. It's impressive. It's hard.

And it shouldn't be. We should not be slave to those anxiety rectangles. Yeah. That is my run the company through there. I'm not on a laptop too much. And that's like my justification is like I work through the phone. And then it's like, and also, a lot of bullshit that I'm rationalizing that I'm spending time on there that has nothing to

do with the company or a lot of being productive or effective. The number of times I've told myself I'm going to work on a device and the next thing you know you're looking at Instagram Reels and you can't actually even remember how you went from the productive platform to the BS rabbit hole. You slid down. It's just your mind is just so yeah, I do my best. Chunking it into those times helps me. And I have everything turned off except for text messages.

and phone calls and I get like the four hour alerts. And also, I mean, some days I'm just super busy. And I'll try to remind myself on days like where I can't even check my phone until the end of the day. Before I do, I'll actively sit there and be like, okay, I often tell myself I have to be 100% accessible all the time. I just wasn't for a day. Let's see what I missed.

You know what the answer is almost always? Nothing. Nothing critical whatsoever. And it helps. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, I'm about to be a father in like three months. First time?

First time. Strap in. Yeah, getting ready. But at the point of, I wouldn't say contention, but it's like, you know, Raya, my partner, she's like, the phone's like the fit, like, okay. And it's all these things that, at least for me, what's coming up is like as a father or new, about to be, it's like these traits that I was like, oh, that'll be worked out by the time I'll have a kid or something like that.

And it's like, no, you have more or less probably an addiction to your phone. And that's, you're about to, like, is that designed to be though. Exactly. Exactly. It's not these devices and all of the apps on them are not designed to try to help us out. They're designed to try to help them out. Our time and attention is what's being monopolized and commoditized. Yeah.

And so it's like figuring out what the, yeah, I think the time slots, something going towards, clicking there, do not disturb 24-7. That's a double edged sword too, because then I'm do not stirring. I'm like, oh, I should I check to see if something important came up because I didn't get the notification. I find that people will call. If it's truly like the barns on fire, I mean, if there was an emergency, would you text somebody or call? Yeah, you call. I would call.

Maybe open with the text. Hey, buddy. They're the classic one from my kids. Hey, what are you doing? Anytime I get that text, my response is, what are you doing? You don't give up. You never care. what I'm doing. Yeah. My response is, what are you doing with two question marks? And then the phone

rings shortly thereafter. But it's, people will call. What's still for your business? What would be, like, what would be a house on fire scenario that you would need to know about immediately? Software issue, product issue. What do you think it would be? Yeah, I mean, it, there's always those issues going on. Like there's some level of, you know, I think I, the one that, As I really think, like, what is imperative in the moment? It would be someone on my executive team that's in their code red moment, like, that they need some support. So that could be a variety of things. Yeah.

Obviously, some major PR dynamic, like, trying to understand, like, okay, we have to come do some decision pretty quick here of what we want to do. Like, thankfully, that's never really happened. Like somebody's bobbing for apples in a cold plunge and they die as a hypothetical. Someone, you know, God forbid, drowns in the plunge for some reason or like has. It's going to happen at some time. Totally. You know what's going to happen, though? Heart attack first, then drown.

Yeah. I mean, we haven't had it. We're very... Well, they're not going to call customer support because they're dead. No, it'll be interesting how that one comes out. But yeah, what is the true... Well, you have an executive team, right? We do.

Have a great executive team. Did you take your time in hiring them? We did. We built it. I mean, we started. It was Mike and I in a garage. Yeah. Like, we built these things.

You know, the company's... scaled rapidly. What kind of architecture do you have with your leadership team? Do they know the boundaries that they can work inside of and when they need to go up to a high level of authority? I think so. And it's, you know, varying to each person's different. Yeah.

Each, we operate under a structure. It's called EOS. Yeah. Entrepreneur operating system. So it's a really clear framework of how we meet, how we, you know, elevate issues, bring forth issues, come to solutions. So those are all good. and the reason I was asking about, you know, the boundaries is that it's really empowering to anybody, employees and leadership staff.

If they know inside of these matrix, I can make decisions I need to as long as they are aligned with our strategic goal. That was one of the things I appreciated about the military. Like, I knew exactly the decisions I was authorized to make and where I needed to go one level up. And that'll take a lot of bandwidth off of you. Because sometimes, guess what? The executives need to figure it out on their own. And we, Mike, my co-founder and I, that's, I think, a lot of things we need to improve, but that's an area that we do pretty well.

Awesome. We give them a lot of space and we treat whatever their domain is, we have them treat it like their own operation, you know, and they are ultimately accountable for it. They are responsible for it. They have, you know, they know where we're going. Ideally, if they don't, we're discussing it. And they can make decisions within it. So that's been effective.

We move, you know, we're five years coming up on this business. move really, really fast. I think where we're trying to go is actually kind of, I don't want to say slow down, but like really, last year has been this like infrastructure build, which is sometimes you've got to be a little slower, a little more methodical, a little more intentional. And so that's where we've been in this last year.

And so the team, you know, we've brought in, it's an interesting one because we've operated as kind of a startup. Now coming out of our startup phase, we've brought in a lot of talent from, you know, bigger, bigger company. like Amazon, Chevron, North of Grummit, like, you know, established cultures that are very different than what plunges as this, you know, upstart health and wellness brand. Do you make them get in the plunge? We do.

We do all our final interviews in sauna plunge. They come. We plunge. We get in the sauna, which is always more vulnerability, more transparency. In the sauna? Yeah, exactly. Seriously? You're joking?

The cold plunge is way worse. Well, the colds. like you go in and you're pretty, you kind of focus. It's a two, you know, it's a two to five minute experience on your own in the cold. Where the sauna you get. Oh no, you should interview people and it's like whoever gets out first doesn't get the job. Yeah. This is what I think in my mind. So we're, that's like, that's like, that's like, that's like, that's like, that's like, that's, are you willing to, that's, are you willing to show up to a job interview and get in a cold plunge. You get in a bathing suit, getting a sauna. Like, that's not typical in major corporate

structures. Very Andy Elliott. Take your shirt off. Yeah. Take your shirt off. Give us a flex. Short shorts only. And you get in. And that's like the passing. Will you get in? Are you willing to do this? You don't have to be great. Are you willing to get uncomfortable and have that experience? Because, you know, they're on our turf. Yeah. Like when that point, you're, you're kind of, it's Mike and I, co-founders together. You're kind of like, shit, am I going to get this job? These guys are making me do a coal plunge with them. You know, and everyone on the executive team has done it, and it's been, you know, and we've had a ton of people we've hired, like we didn't hire that did it, did it well.

But it is a good barometer of, you know, who's willing to do it and who says yes. Do you get in the plunge tub with them? We have not done a face-to-face, eye gaze plunge yet. Again, I'll just throw stuff out there, take whatever works. That's, do you have experience with? I have a lot of experience in cold water, which is why I would, I would, rather have, are you familiar with the Irish dance, the river dance? I know of it.

Yeah. So I would rather have a 300 pounds Samoan woman in nine inch stiletto heels doing that on my ball sack than cold plunge. So you hate cold water. I don't hate it. Well, I don't know what is stilettos on your balls is pretty like. It's pretty good in comparison to a coal plunge. I was forced to participate in a lot of cold water BS earlier in my life.

With the seal. Yes. We were in the water. It's funny. In the training environment, in pre-9-11, we were always in the water. And what I tell people is, if you worked at Baskar Robbins, you probably wouldn't want to go get ice cream on the weekends. I have done my fair share of cold plunging.

I just really dislike it. That's why the sauna, I'm like, let's go. Like, I partying the sauna all day long. I was shocked that the sauna was harder for people. Yeah, it's... I mean, first of, what are you cranking this thing up to? Sana? Yeah.

We usually around 200. Okay, so that's not like, that's not insane. No, it's not, it's fine to get in. It's when you're at that 20 minute mark, you know, and you're kind of, the world's starting to close in a little on you and you're someone's talking. You're like, I can't pay attention to what you're saying. And dude, I need to get out. You know, that's that like, okay, let's go 30 seconds more.

Let's go 60 seconds more and try and push people there. But, I mean, colds like, sucks when you get in, but I think it gets a little easier as you're in it. Oh, no, no, no. It sucks when you get in. Actually, the thought of it sucks before you get in. Then it sucks when you get in. Then it sucks while you're in.

And then you have to rewarm. So it sucks when you're out. Hard. So when you get out, there is no better feeling than when you come out of the cold and you're in some. Like, that's a drug. So I want you to go do, we're going to do a trip. We're going to go up to one of my first cold plunges, which was when they gave us our dry suit appreciation evolution in Kodiak, Alaska.

And we're up there for cold weather training. And the gear list on the board literally said, shorts and running shoes. And I'm looking at this. And it might, now there was no life jacket. And we all got into a van and drove to the beach in Kodiak. The beach, snow covered, by the way, snow and ice covered.

Everybody had to go get out, completely dunk into the neck and water. And then hands, was it hands? No, hands was for the tread. You had to go completely underwater and then beat to your neck for five minutes. And there was like ice and stuff floating around. It probably wasn't insane. But the rewarming from that was the worst. Yeah.

pins and needles because you were almost instantly numb. Getting into the water was not joyous. Oh, and by the way, the clock didn't start until the last person had dunked their head. And we had some people who were lollygagging. What's that? Taking their time, tying their shoes. And it doesn't start until everyone. Not until the last person gets their head underwater.

So there was some enthusiastic coaching for those who were taking their time. Yeah, it sucked. I mean, to me there's like degrees of coal, no pun intended, of like cold water immersion. Sure. Like that is, you are strictly doing that for resilience building. No, they were doing that because it was done to the instructors. And so then in the military, you passed generational trauma down.

Exactly. You're doing, like I'm saying, like, like we focus is plunge. We like doing the hard thing. That's great. But we're two to three minutes, 45 to 50 degrees, learn to regulate your breath. Like, it's a very different experience than some of these like, extreme. And yeah, you could get our plunges and do a 10 minute at 37 degrees and sit in there. Do you have a 94 degree cold plunge? We do have a cold plunge that goes to 94. Yes, I'm talking about.

Then you can, you can do the, read a book, hot tub by night, cold plunge by the morning. But I think there's like, you know, cold water, there's, there's nuance that we're discovering to how to go about it. and the benefits that you're, like, I would put that into, I don't know what the, like, physical benefit is. There wasn't any, it was legitimately, they called it dry suit appreciation. Because if you were to immerse yourself in that water up there, it was to show you how much usable time you have before you're just done. And the answer for most people is between five to ten minutes and you're going to die.

Got it. That's literally what it was. And I think that, so that was that purpose, where most are buying our product not to have a dry suit appreciation. It's a missed opportunity. Maybe the marketing should change there. Ours is much more into, like, it's actually, we're trying, like, we're looking at features to roll out right now of how to coach people. We get a lot of people that buy our product.

And they think it's 37 degrees for 10 minutes. And we're like, they get the product and they haven't really done it before. And they like, I jump in, I do 10. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, you might actually do some tissue damage there. You want to. Totally. This isn't net negative right now.

This is not the benefit that what you think this is for, and you're not proving anything to anyone. It's, to me, it'd be like taking someone that maybe hadn't been working out and going to do a CrossFit workout with Rich Froning. I was literally just thinking of the exact same analogy of somebody who is sedentary and says, today is my day to go train with the World Champion. You wouldn't do that with anything. You would.

Even a diet. How do people, most changes in eating routine, they start off incrementally and it's an exposure-based. Yeah, the bolus approach. giddy up. I mean, I respect it to a degree, but. Yeah, it's, look, I'm all for the one-off. I love doing the random hard thing, but most are never even going to be rich frowning. Like, so it's again, finding your space of, okay, what is your, are you doing this for mood elevation? Are you doing this for some nervous system regulation? Like, there are different things you can do it. And it's, it's, it's, like, so we always recommend 55 degrees, two to three minutes. I don't care if you're a

man or a woman. I don't care of your age. Start there. Some people, you actually need to raise the temp up a little. You need to, okay, cool, you're actually in a spot. Let's lower it two degrees and kind of figure out your spot. And we see it most with men that, you know, men get in and they just want to fight through it. I'm going to tough through this thing. Like I'm going to get in and I'm not going to, five minutes easy. And they just like get out and they're, they never really relaxed into the experience. And I would argue at that point, cool, you did a hard thing. That's great. But the benefit you are looking for or why you want a consistent. do this, you're actually hurting yourself. So, you know, we're trying to educate and coach into,

okay, how do you get your heart rate down? How do you start to calm down in this chaos? But you've got to find the right temp for that. You cannot, some is just too intense and you're not going to be able to regulate yourself. So I think there's a, you know, dry suit initiation. Maybe we'll do that once a year on a marketing campaign. But it could be a bespoke retreat. Yeah. I mean, I mean, Wim's doing shit like that and some of his. Yeah, but we also, share the earth with crazy people. Totally. Who cares? Totally. So do you won't get in a

culpunch? You're like, you're done. I am not against it. It's, for me, it's psychological. I just dislike it. The sauna, we had a, uh, I got one of those sweat tents last winter and set it up in the backyard. That to me is awesome. Yeah. Especially post-jitsu. Like a woodfire one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Post-Jiu-Jitsu, like just

sweating it out at the end of the, of the end of the day. Like that, that one was a really good one for me. Yeah. I think the sauna having that is like a ritual at the end of the night. It's my. You sleep so much better. Yep. Just like melting into your sleep pod system, whatever you have. That's another mistake.

I got one of those eight sleeps. Do you use it? Yeah. Now I can't escape the metrics. Everywhere I look, there's metrics, metrics, metrics, metrics. Now my wife's like, hey, what's your sleep score? I'm like, mind your own business. It's a competition every night.

She's going to win every time. Do you like it? I do. She, my God, is like laying next to the surface of the sun. And I don't like sleeping hot. So it's the split temperature. She actually has mentioned she really enjoys it because she can keep it warmer and I can keep it cooler. I do sleep better with the temperature regulation.

That's one thing I found. So you sleep pretty cool. Not like pretty cool, but I can't do it if I'm anywhere near hot, like warm or I just cannot sleep. So I'd rather be on the colder side than the hot side. Yeah. It's a slick piece of hardware. We got the one that came with the, I mean, they had reached out one time to sponsor the podcast. I was like, oh, this might be my chance.

Yeah, I paid full retail for this thing. And then, because I never followed up with them, which is probably not a good business, but that's just more about me than them. So I got the one with a blanket, too, so it kind of encapsulates you in it. It's pretty sweet. So you have on the top. Top and bottom, yeah. And then funny enough, we have a miniature doxend.

He sleeps dead center on the middle. He's like half of his legs are on the hot side and his body's on the cold or vice versa. He's found his low group. Yeah, he's completely happy with it as well. That's great. That's great. Because I am interested in the metrics, but again, I don't, I want the tool to work for me. I don't want to become beholden to this data set because the reality is it doesn't matter what the number shows you.

You're still going to have to go do what you need to do in your day. And I know people. And I've caught myself in that trap before. Well, today is not going to be my day. I'm like, definitely not. If you're telling yourself that first thing in the morning. Yeah, you're set up for that. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's a, like, I don't think we've figured out all this tech of how to integrate. There's obviously benefit for it. Yeah. And then it becomes, you can. at some point. It's going to be, the user's going to have to determine that. You can't throttle that because people want, they want it even deeper, right?

They want, you know, if you're going to give them an hourly sleep review, they're like, well, what about every 30 minutes? What about every 15? What about every 10? What would be the metric if there was a wearable to tell you something that you would, that you would take? Today's episode is brought to you by Stopbox. Let's talk about firearms in the terms of secure storage.

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And it was... If death was imminent, because then I would just go try and find something awesome to do. You'd want to know. Oh, yeah. Would you want to know if you were going to, like, when you're going to die? Yeah. Like right now, if I told you, Andy, this is... Yep.

Wouldn't you? How much would it change your life? It would change. everybody's life that we know because they would immediately strip away every piece of bullshit and focus only on what mattered. Yeah. I think about it a lot and I go back and forth. Have you seen the mortality calendars where it marks the number of weeks you have remaining in the average lifespan? I have. Yeah, that goes all the way back to like Aristotle. It was him or, you know, one of those individuals, what do they call those people? The Stoics.

Considering your mortality multiple times per day was actually considered a benefit to their life to remind you that you have an unknown amount of time left. Totally. And it's diminishing. I think of it like what is what is the like digestible? Like the thing that hits me the most right now is like how many times are I going to see my parents? Even though they live near me. Like there's some number on a calendar. It might be a hundred.

It might be less. You know what I mean? Yep. And that's like, wow. Like or how many summers do I have left? Like, I love summer. And I'm like, maybe got 40 to 50 more summers here. Like, if your number came back, like, hey, you have a month, would you go rob a bank?

I wouldn't rob a bank. Why? I missed opportunity. I would, look, I would want to do, I would want to put as much good out as I could. Like, that would be important to me in my kind of. Think about how much good you could do with that money. In a month, man, what would I do in a month? I guarantee you it would be different that whatever you have planned.

I fucking want that money to do good things. So like I now have this money. Yeah. And then I just, I let my friends take the money. Nah, you go have awesome experiences. I would go just spend all my money.

Exactly. And that way you could leave some behind because you could use that cash that you got from the bank. Okay. So you were all bank. I'm not saying I wouldn't. You have one month to live.

Yeah. What's the first thing you go do? Stop doing any job that I have whatsoever. Fair. And just spend time with the people I love. Yep. I mean, that's it right there. Just like a gathering.

Would you go travel with them somewhere? Every day I would pick something that I haven't done it. I would go do it for 30 days. And then the last day would be like skydiving without a parachute. Beat the, beat the, what if that was the self-fulfilling? Yeah. Like you actually learned that. The day before, the 30 days like, oh, he jumped.

The whole thing was a joke. Like, oh, it was just a thought exercise. Exactly. Yeah, I'm not saying, you know. I think everybody would do exactly the same thing. They'd immediately stop doing anything that wasn't rewarding and enriching to them. And they would spend time with people that they cared about, which is wild because the world we live in is almost designed to do the opposite of that. But I don't know.

Michael, what would you do as a 23-year-old? 25, first of all. Second of all, I would have to strike a balance between going to all the places I want to go and seeing as many people as. possible that I love. Why are you not traveling now? I am. I just got back from a trip. You did a trip per year. Now you have a month left to live. You know what you'd say yourself? Damn, I wish I had traveled more. Yeah, that's why I'm working on it right now. I'm actually considering taking my next trip this fall, by the way. So I'll get back to you on that, Japan. Japan? Yes. Did you talk to Sean? I have actually talked to Sean. Yeah. Japan's awesome.

I've heard great things. What are you going to do there? not talk to women Yeah, he goes Well, first of all, I would not be able to understand What they're saying Okay, you understand that people in Japan also speak English, right? Not as widespread as Okay, you could you could

I have my pulse on the dating scene By talking with him And let me just tell you It apparently is more of a land field than Afghanistan Landmines just out there, just horrible What are the landmines? Oh, just the ability talking about the digital aspect of it,

hard to connect the people, what people are looking for, it just, it seems rough. It's a lot more nuance nowadays. Stay in it with your girl and the kid. Yeah. But if you had 30 days,

you're telling me you wouldn't think to yourself or one of the first thoughts wouldn't be, I wish I had. No, I'm sure it would. That's why I would be like, I want to go to all the places I want to go. So it was.

stops us from doing that now. But I think it's also negligent to not somewhat plan for the future. But people... Like if I only live for today. Yeah. I'm not saying only live for today. Or live for 30 days. Like you see a lot of people that make short-term decisions that don't set themselves up.

Don't do the hard thing or go through a hard season. I'm doing stuff I don't want to do to get to a place I want to do. I get it. But you also see a lot of people who can think so far out and I'm going to have to plan to set up my future self and their future self doesn't make it. Or they get to that point. My dad right now, love him to death, has more money than he's ever had in his life from the sale of a home in Santa Cruz.

I wonder, though, how much opportunity will he have to enjoy it? My theory with him, and I tell him this all the time, I was like, dude, bounce the last check. I don't want a dime of your money. Go to town. A lot of the things that he thought he was going to do in his retirement. that he now can do economically, he can't do physically. So it's that balance. And I've seen that happen over and over again.

Planning for retirement, planning for retirement, planning for retirement, planning for retirement, and then something happens. You get a divorce, your spouse passes, you don't want to do those things anymore. You don't even make it health issue. There's a balance somewhere. I'm not saying be irresponsible. I think a lot of us, the standard is we plan so far out that you lose kind of what's right and front of you. And I think that finding that balance, to me, like, I don't know,

understand money at all. I've made some stupid decisions with money. I'm not rich by any stretch. But to me, wealth is the ability to do what you want to with your time. That's it. It's not a thing. If I want to travel the world and do jiu-jitsu with my wife, if I can do that, I'm as wealthy as I want to be. That's it. Yeah. And I think I totally agree. I mean, that is the ultimate wealth. Like money is, money is not for the dollar in the account. It's a time coupon. It's a freedom purchase that you have. I do, I mean, I look at, I think there was a big shift. I think like you have like the baby boomer generation, they live for retirement.

That was what they bought in. Like that, that was what they believed in general, generality. Retirement, I work. I'm going to have that time off. And then it was a shift almost to maybe our generation, maybe even younger, where it was like the other end. Like I live for experience. And I'm, you know, some of these other longer term horizon things are put off and they're almost demonized.

I think there's somewhere in the middle. Yeah, I agree. There's, and it's, again, there's no perfect answer to it. But, you know. What's interesting, I've talked to my dad about this. I've had him on the show a few times. His, so his parents' generation, I tell you what, man, they didn't really think about longevity, health, maintaining their movement as they got older. My dad, I remember him working out, but I tell you what, around the time of my generation and my peers, and I'm sure you guys are seeing this with what you do.

People are now trying to find ways to maximize whatever time they have left, whether it's from coal plunge, sauna. And they are taking that deeper into life and deeper into their planning. So I think they're going to buy a more tail end functionality. I can't imagine anything worse. What a horrible prison to economically be able to do whatever you want, but physically not being able to do anything. Scares the shit out of me. That would be the worst. Like I sense it, like even now, you know, I'm coming up.

I'm 39. like there is a difference of obviously what I felt when I was 25. Oh yeah. And I sense it. And then it's like, man, it's only going to get harder. Like don't give up. Like I used to play a bunch of basketball. I don't play much anymore because of bad ankles and I do it.

But I'm like, I don't know if I'll ever really get that. Like it's only going to get harder. The momentum just gets more and more. And so I think through of like to your point of like, dude, if you don't, it's the microactions today. Yeah. That are going to be that it's cumulative. It would be 75 to be able to still go hiking and do the thing. Like that's, that's a decision made today.

That is not. Yeah. My dad's 78. He walks. He's got a dog. He walks every day into the gym. He's got a great routine. 78 just finished a week long fly fishing boat trip where they're floating down the river.

It kicked his nuts a little bit, but he was able to do it. And I'll be honest, there's a lot of 78-year-olds that would not even be able to consider that. So he is. And again, I look at him. I'm like, okay, what are you doing? I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to do more than that. What do I need to change now three decades younger than him to make that happen?

That's what I think. That's what gets me over the hurdle with stuff like sauna. Not the sauna necessarily, but the coal plunge. There's also psychos up here. What do they call it, Michael, the polar plunge? Oh, yeah. You go to the five head lake in the ice. And it's like, I hope you can't find the entrance to that and go under the ice.

Tell me more. You've got a little thing to work out here with the cold. And they're doing it really short shorts. I'm like, nobody wants to see. I think the thing for me that's like, you know, it's probably walking. That's like the most on a screen a lot. Like that's the thing that I'm like, I'm sacrificing right now. Like I'm not getting the number of steps that I would.

And that's just like a daily deposit. That's like. How do you work out outside of just movement, the walking? You mentioned CrossFit and Rich Froning. Are you connected with him at all? Yeah, we've done some stuff with Rich. He's so cool. I've known him for years.

I used to work for CrossFit. Oh, really? Yeah. Years ago. Okay. Back in like 2006 to 2014. Okay. So you know like Jason, Kalipa.

Jason was texting me this morning, talking about the origin jiu-jitsu camp that he's not going to be able to be at. Got it. So, of course, I lorded that over him. Yeah, Jason's a homie. I don't know if you guys make a tub large enough for him. He is like the closest thing to the Hulk. He fits.

He fits. Yeah, he's a beast. He gets bigger and bigger. I know. I'm telling you. like, if you painted that guy green, people might think he's the Hulk on the street. He's such a monster. I'm not, I'm different.

I ran a marathon earlier this year, so I was doing a lot of like endurance training. Now more of like kettlebell workouts, just kind of functional movement stuff, gone through my yoga phases. I like to switch it up. I'm not like a militant on one workout, like my body needs variety. I think that's the key. Go on a lot of walks with your wife with a stroller. Okay.

Leading up to the birth. And then it's cool, man. The kids getting exposed to, you know, three months in Sacramento, that's actually going to be beautiful because you'll be deep into the fall. Right now, I wouldn't recommend that because they'll fry like an egg. But, yeah, and it'll help postpartum as well, too. So that'd be a good chance to get your steps in. Yep.

That's the one kind of edge. Workouts are good, all that. But it's like, just the simple stuff. Like, that's the stuff. that, you know, I think pays leave in the longer, like, longer term benefit. So you decided to do this during COVID. Had you already had the thought and then COVID happened? Or this is something that you realized, like, lockdown, I need to reinvent myself,

figure out what to do. Yeah, it was, I mean, for me, COVID was like super transformative time. So I, like, you know, I was living in the same place I had, was with Raya, my partner then. and had capital floats, and that was my life. And then within three months, her and I broke up. My capital floats was shut down in California. I decided to buy an RV and move out and live in an RV. So my life, like in three months, like completely flipped upside down.

You know, her and I, we ended up getting back together, all good there. Capital Floats gets back open. But Mike, my co-founder, who happened to own Float Tank Center in the Bay Area randomly, we became buddies kind of through that. He was the one, he's the product guy, and he was. was like, I think there's an opportunity here. I don't see anyone building coal plunges. And we didn't know the size of the market, but it was literally a business plan of, well, let's build 20 of these, and we'll email our capital floats and reboot floats bar and we'll say, we'll deliver to your home.

Who wants to buy one? And that was, you know, that was the business plan. And within six weeks, we were first page, first page ranking on Google. You know, a big choice we made early on was, you know, the company's named Plunge. At the time when we were launching, the term Coal Plunge was, IceBath was 10X the search on, then Coal Plunge on the internet. What were people using Ice Bath for?

Was it the same thing? I'm trying to think of when I first heard of or saw somebody kind of openly. Wim Hof was kind of the, but was it being utilized? I mean, I had some buddies who played pro ball in the NFL. They certainly were using ice a ton. But it wasn't necessarily cold plunge.

I think they were doing that for kind of injury, like post-injury, swelling stuff. What was the first commercial usage of that? What were people using it for before that? Yeah, I mean, it was, everyone has the story of the ice bath post game or whatever. Yeah. It had been a thing. Oh, the ice bucket challenge. Ice bucket challenge was a thing of just cold water on your head, but it really wasn't about, like, why are we?

It was just like, oh, this is a crazy thing. Yeah. Wim was the first to kind of put it in some beneficial format of like separate than just like getting your, quote, not that we were using these words, but your inflammation down from post-workout or something like that. You know, Wim had brought it into a whole new category around immune system and energy and mood. So that was like kind of the start of it. But they're really, the products on the market really was a chest freezer. That was kind of what the start was. People were building a chest freezer that you normally put meat in and filling it up with water, cocking them. And they were just like

filling up with water. So that was kind of. Or a trough for livestock with ice. 100%. And that was in. Which is a real thing. And you'd empty it every, you know, month or, you know, ideally sooner. I was going to say that's a science experiment waiting to happen. You see some nasty, nasty stuff growing. And so that was, that was kind of, we were like, there was no market. It was a really fringe kind of super biohacky space that was early adopter. And so, you know, creating this product that was like, we want a beautiful product that

looks good that the wife's going to like it. She's going to sign off on the purchase. And like, it looks good in the home. It functions. And so that was the start of it. And it just, you know, there was clearly a pent-up market that we didn't even really foreseen. Obviously, it's a much better category now. So that was the extent of the business.

And we, you know, we had there was, the business plan was let's build 20, quote unquote. And we will put like a 10 to 12 week lead time on these things. We'll just hand deliver to their homes. We were just driving on in Northern California, dropping them off. And then, you know, the business starts taking off and we have to figure out how to ship these things. And we figured, we went from, you know, we were a service, brick. and mortar business to a e-commerce hardware manufacturing business completely different we had no what we've learned over the last five years is completely different entrepreneur is entrepreneur you

know how to take action you know you know focused on the most important thing but we didn't the skill set that we have in the business now is very different than what we had learned on our previous businesses and so you know it was just uh we you know have since grown into now we do saunas we sunset at all of our first generation products have all of our new products now that we design engineer in-house and develop. Where'd you get the first generation ones? I mean, having the idea of, hey, I got it. Let's start an online business.

That's great. How did you find a dude who knew how to make a coal plunge or a gal? It was Mike and I in the garage making them. Like Mike, yeah. I mean, Mike, like, we, you know, it was like, into Mike's credit, Mike's kind of like the guy that's like, it's not that hard. Like, he's, he go over indexes. Like, I can figure this out.

And it's, which I appreciate. And I'm not a product guy at all. Like, in fact, I, those early days being in the garage when I had to, like, cut BVC pipe and glue things, like, that is, like, viscerally uncomfortable for me. Like, I have, like, childhood trauma from that. Like, it's not just, like, oh, I don't like doing this. It's like, this is my edge. And, you know, questioned why am I doing this. I'm a successful entrepreneur.

I don't like, like, I'm so uncomfortable here. Meanwhile, we have arts and crafts in the garage. Yeah, exactly. And so we're there in his garage in Sacramento, neighbors. We had to move out because. Neighbors were getting so pissed at us into, you know, we have these tubs. We're draining them, filling them, testing them. Garbage is like lining in the house.

And so where did you find the original tub design? Or did you just go something that was already on the shelf? Yeah, so it was on the shelf, but it was crazy. So Mike had, this is one of the kind of the synchronistic parts of the business, he had looked in freestanding bathtub. And the largest supplier was 30 minutes down the road. No way. In woodland.

And so we, and Mike had a van that he would camp in. And so we were able to fit one tub. It was like perfect size that we could fit one of these tubs in. And we drive down and they were just like, oh, we have like messed up units that like that were not. So we were able to build the early prototypes. Like they would just give it to us for like 100 bucks or something. Off of bathtubs essentially.

Yeah. These were freestanding. The original ones were a already on the market freestanding bathtub, like the symmetric unit that you see, the white units. Michael, go to, it's plunge.com, right? Plunge.com. Yeah, I want to pull this up so we can take a look at these things. So the ones you'll see now, those are all like design. Those tubs are completely different designs similar.

But yeah. So the torture device on the right and then the awesome device on the left. Yep. You got the sauna go in between if you just like X out of this in the corner. Oh, there it does. And then if you just go like up at the top, coal plunge would probably be the one. Yep.

The all ends kind of like our main. Oh, wow. Man, you guys got a variety of those things. Yeah. So this one's like our best seller. fully integrated. It's just like a real, it's a small footprint for what this is.

You can see the origins of the bathtub model. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Like the origins are there, but it's, that's obviously not cold water.

She's enjoying that. What? Go to hell. She's enjoying that far too much. I think we did cool that down to, like, it's a rule now. When any models get in,

we have to have it in the 50s at least. All right. To get a reaction. So anyways, Is this, these tubs, yeah, this unit's one that we designed and that, you know, that's our IP. The original unit, though, I would say the kind of the genius of it was it was all off the shelf parts. So we didn't have to develop a supply chain. We're able to purchase like everything.

Like our original unit's not on this site. You'll see these black chillers now. And they're called, the company's called Active Aqua. And the real company out in China is called Hilea. That has become. So we found this company, and they were a hydroponic little chilling box. And we were like, oh, this could work for chilling the units on the original unit. It wasn't, we'd have to like come up with any.

Because chilling water is a very complicated thing. It's like as hard. It's like up there with HVAC. Like it is a constant. It's the hardest part of the process? By far. It is a, that is a very heating, a sauna, easiest shit in the world. Yeah.

Coal plunges, very complicated. Refrigerent, compressors, a lot of things that can go wrong. Like a lot of different environment. that are unit working in Phoenix, so compared to a unit working in New York, at different environments. So you have to find this like really sweet spot to keep cold water, keep water, cold water going. But anyways, this chiller was there. We had this, we just bought one and we started using them. That company who was doing hydroponics by far sells way more units for DIY coal plunges now. And they have blown up. I mean, we're talking like the active aqua

chiller is like the sworn by, they completely shifted their business model. Yeah. Okay. So it's the DIY fix for people. Yeah. There's a lower, you know, if you want, there are some people that like to build and you can do it more affordably than obviously buy a cool plunge. Yeah. But if you just want it showing up, you know, support system, everything there. Like we, you know, now like our big thing where we're taking this too is we have a we have a back-in firmware. What that means is there's two fronts to it. First, think of like your Tesla. Tesla's get updates over the air every month. You know, they're updating your unit, making it more efficient.

They learn things about the data that's coming in. That's the same with our coal plunges. So we can learn how to efficiently run them better. We can actually get preemptive alerts like, oh, you're coming up on an issue within your unit. We can lock the unit. We can, or if you call in, we can look at the back end, hey, we're noticing an issue with your unit. So that's like a kind of a interesting, like really exciting one on the IoT side. And then the other side, you know, we were just kind of knocking the wearables.

But we really want to coach people into how to cold plunge. Because we see so many people that just think I should go to 37 degrees and suffer through this. Where there are clear signals of how your heart rate showing up in the water to show if you're getting net benefit or net, net harm. And so that's a feature we're going to be rolling out in about two quarters where you'll get like a score every time you get in. Based off your whoop, your aura, your Apple Watch. I'm going to ask you how it's measured. And it'll basically say, hey, we actually recommend you raise the temp by three to degrees. and you go with 30 seconds less based off of the goals that you're looking for within this.

Smarter, not harder is what you're talking about. 100%. Just because, and this was such the mentality of my old job, if it's more difficult, it must be more good. There's a place for difficulty. There is, but there's also a place for working intelligently and far surpassing those that are just smashing their head against the wall for the sake of smashing their head against the wall. It's outcome. I mean, I think most of us are looking for outcome. of why we do something.

And yeah, and there are times that you, you know, you run the marathon. You got to do 26 miles. You got to do the hard thing to get to that outcome. But most of the time, you know, for this, it's like it is to feel better. Like in the most simple form. Yeah. A colpon, we, people buy this product because they want to have more energy with their grandkids. They want to, you know, play pickleball longer.

Like, so you don't need to go crazy with it. In fact, we recommend people go a lot less crazy than what we've seen kind of out in the world. It's interesting to see this stuff, specifically with saunas too, because most traditional gyms weren't going to have a coal plunge. I mean, maybe saw one that had the old school like literal cow drinking trough in it. But these people, I mean, people now are bringing this ability into their house. That was what COVID shifted. COVID took, you only do this at a gym to the home buildout. Yeah. It was like accelerate. I think the trend was going there, but it like went fast into, oh, I could put this in my home.

I can have a home spa. I can have a home gym. Like legit home spa, home gym. Like better than you're going to get. Michael, click on the sauna one too. When did you, so how many years in did you realize that you needed the heat aspect as well? It was pretty early that we, so we, this was not a part of our plan.

We basically had launched the coal plunge. Our customers were reaching out, hey, who do you recommend or will you ever build one? That was like within our first year. We did a survey. It was like 40% were like, we want to buy a sauna now. So it took us about 18 months to two years to develop the top one, the Plunge XL, or the sauna. Excuse me, the sauna there on the left. It's a high heat, traditional sauna, you know, made of cedar.

And so we launched that beginning of last year. Easier to design than the coal plunge? It was, I think the design, there were some, like, nuance to this design. You can see the features of how the angles are. So this all comes modular and it's, it's in a panel format, which most high heat sonnas, you got to build like wood, piece of wood by piece of wood. Where this comes in like eight pieces and it takes about half the time as I would say a traditional like either barrel sauna. So that was like a feature we wanted to get to. So that was some design, like how to actually what the angles need to be to hold this up.

But other like the heating. What is the heating element? Electric. It's electric. Yeah. We use a, that was one that we went off the shelf. with a company out of Estonia called Hume. They have a number of different styles.

It was important to us. They have a back-end system that we can work off our app. It's also aesthetically, I think they do a really good job. Oh, they look sick. Yeah, with the stones so you can create the steam on the inside.

So yeah, this, you know, that middle one, the mini is a unique product that it's, we didn't really solve price point, but we solved space to have a small high heat sauna. I mean, it looks about the size of a, traditional closet. Yeah, it's like a two to three person. It's like, you know, infrared's,

what are nice is you can put them in a lot of spaces. They're mostly indoor where this one, we, you know, people that don't have a ton of backyard space, you usually aren't able to get a high heat sauna. And so that's one where it's, you know, cranks up to 215. That's plenty hot too. Plenty. That'll get her done. Dude, I'm, I'm 185 and I'm like, that's great for me. Yeah, you can sit in there and not forget the fourth grade. Exactly, man. So, yeah. So the bigger ones get up to 230.

But that's kind of our, that's the crazies that are taking it up there consistently. What's the hardest part about being an entrepreneur? Well, this answer varies. But I think right now it'd be like I can't turn it off. You mean thinking about this particular products? Yeah, the products. What's going on in the business, what I need to solve.

You know, and I, and I, mean that in a sense of like, like there's a privilege to that of like a responsibility and that's great. Like I'm on. I love what I do. There is the other end of that spectrum where it's like, dude, lay this down for a second. Like you can focus over here and do something else. And that's kind of the season I'm in right now. I would say is the hardest part. Have you ever done the exercise where you split a piece of paper? It's the circle of influence versus circle of concern exercise. So if you get a piece of paper and split it down the middle. And on one side, you put influence, which could read for most people, things you can directly control.

Concern would be things that occupy your mind that you're really worried about. But if you think about it, you don't actually have that much control over. And every time I've done this exercise, the right-hand side column is robust. And I realize I'm putting almost all of my energy in that, but I can't control it. I can worry about it all I want to. There's only actually one thing you can put in the circle of influence. and that's yourself. The way you talk to yourself,

your actions, speech, behaviors, all of those things. And so for me, it really helps because I don't consider myself to be an entrepreneur,

mostly because I don't know the actual definition of the word other than somebody that starts businesses, which is like, I have a talk. Yeah, I guess that's a start. What is the,

what is the entrepreneur mean? It probably varies by person as well. Yep. But I, it's amazing how much bandwidth I can apply to things that I can't control. And then I asked to ask myself, why am I so worried about this?

Is worry going to change outcome? No, it won't. But I can probably influence outcome by working on myself, forcing myself to put my phone down, forcing myself to get in the sauna at the end of the night, or you know what I mean? Like forcing yourself to take care of yourself first will then impact all of those other things indirectly

that you might be concerned with. But it's a powerful exercise because almost everybody spends all their time worrying about things they can't control. Live up and I totally get that. And it's like that is probably the best part of being entrepreneur is like the action. Like the right column usually starts to fit. But it starts to fade if you take action on something in the left column. It's interesting to see it in black and white though.

How much is just this arrayed and the other column and what you really can only put yourself. That's all you can put. You have control over nothing else in life. That's an interesting thought because then there's like even to your point, I'm sitting here like, oh, what am I in control? It's like you're nothing. We're not. You cannot control how many people are going to come and purchase your product. Or if there's going to be COVID-26 or whatever it would be here, if research is going to come out tomorrow, which I would support that says coal plunging shortens your lifespan.

I might actually create that study with no data to support it whatsoever. It's a n of one. Doesn't matter. I'll leave that part out of the study. It'll be a double blind, triple blind, even, because I won't share it with myself or myself's third person persona. What would be your,

the control group? So you would just, I would just make numbers up. Make numbers up. Yeah. 10,000 people probably. Got it. So is this podcast more of a hit podcast.

You're out to. No. Just, like I said, I'll take the 300 pounds, Samoan. But I do understand the benefits. of it. My wife actually, we went and did some breath work. We did an event where they did breath work and then cold plunge and sauna. God, she locked in. And it's, I don't know, she's tougher than I am though. But it's cool. I mean, I get it. It's for me, it's psychological,

completely psychological. I'm just, I'll get over the hurdle one day. Yeah, I mean, it's, look, cold plunging is one of those things. It's, it sucks every day. But I tell you what, that's one you can put in the control bucket. Right? You can. in control how much you don't want to do it. Actually, you can't control how much you don't want to do it, but you can get yourself flipping the lid off and actually stepping in that thing. Yep.

Yep. And there's something, that's the unquantifiable part to that. Yeah. Too cold where it's like actually doing that you're overriding some narrative. That's like every single day, the steps walking out, there's a voice that's there. Dude, you don't got to do this today. Like, it's a real thing. then you get out and then I do feel great.

And there is some neurological pathway that's being rewritten that is compounding over time. And that's, that's one that's, you know, and it might show up in metrics down the road. It might show up in, you know, I don't know, like your testosterone increasing or immune system is better. Huberman would say it helps in many ways, but he uses words that I don't know. So I can't really tell if he's telling the truth. But I think there's like a, there is a, there is some synergy there. Like having that pathway, I have no clue how it's played out in my life. But having some consistent ritual that I show up.

The thing I like about this is it's simple. Like it's two minutes. Like I don't have to give much time to doing something to transform from feeling a certain way to feeling how after I get out. And there's very few, even on a drug format, that you can take it and it hits that quick. That's true, actually. And I, that's like what I, especially this modern day where, like I came from the float tank world. Float tanks aren't really growing right now because no one has 90 minutes to go do nothing. Like I do think it's beneficial.

I own the fucking place. And I'm not in there very often. So I know with our modern day, it's hard to go give time. Like time is. Our attention's not really there. We see it on how our apps are created and everything in our life is much more consolidated. where cold is to me in relation to where the modern world's going. You can do something very quick, even high heat sonas.

It's 15 minutes. Get in there. You can have it and you can have a full reset of your body. You can cycle through the cold to hotter. And again, I kind of heard so many protocols from going one way or the other. But go through one of those. Maybe it's 30 minutes. It is, there is nobody that I know of.

And so this is anecdotal. But everybody I've ever done that experience with, holy cow. You want to talk about a physical feeling different and psychological? that's real for sure totally and you can do it with your wife you can do it with your friend like the thing that I love now is I have my friends come over on Sunday and we do sauna cold plunge together and that's like a time we get to spend an hour together it's like super connected we have great conversation where I probably wouldn't be hanging with them that like yeah I would if I didn't have this and it's not just sauna and coal plunged but like what are like these type two things you know rucking

super big now like can you go out get on our ruck do it 45 60 minutes put some weight on you go have some good conversation it's like finding these things that you know, you're doing something hard and you're kind of suffering over. It's what CrossFit was so good when it launched, you know. And it was a suffering mechanism that you connected through. And then you felt good after. And, you know, it's why, you know, not in the military, but the military, you guys suffered through and the bonds that were probably created.

Comradery is humor and shared suffering. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's really what. And if you think about, there's an aspect of that on all those examples that you, that you mentioned. What's your, when they come over for an hour, how do you guys cycle through the hot cold? We do we get right into the hot and then we'll do like two cycles and we'll usually go Crank it probably around 190 do like 20 plus minutes or until just each day like one of us is like where I got to get out

We kind of push it for a second there then we go get cold so you go hot cold hot cold Yeah we usually try and end on the cold In the evening I usually end hot If it's like midday or earlier I'll go I'll end on the cold Just to get that energy so And again, there's no, like you said, so many different protocols, so many different dynamics to what works for some people. I honestly think it's kind of like diet.

Like diet varies per person. And I do think getting hot and cold is not some blanket statement that works in the same way for every single person. So anyone listening, like figure out your own protocol. Like don't listen to people that just say, it's not good for women or it's only men at this point. Like those are generally statements that I don't think serve much. But you got to figure it out on your own, kind of what works.

What are you guys looking at in the future? Do you have any other products? We do. I don't want you to obviously release anything secret, but. Yeah, well, you know, there's always improvement on the current product line that go, like, deep into the systems that we want. I think we're really our app and how we connect to the customer, I think is a big opportunity for us. And it won't be for everyone to use their wearable, but I think a personal coach that, helps you with using these tools is I think a big opportunity for us.

And then there's some other categories that won't say here, but net new stuff that I think is, our direction is we want to be your one-stop shop for your home spa. Your home health and wellness, all connected to one simple system. You have it. You can control, turn everything on, turn it off from one place. So that's kind of how we think about it. Like a lot of our customers, obviously this takes space. So we really build for people that, you know, mostly it's more backyard space.

We're big in the commercial side. So like that's more of our urban penetration of like, okay, we do commercial products for people to go be into the urban environments. And then really building for homes with space. And so we have a couple other, obviously we're, you know, temperatures, a direction for us. We like to, you know, what products can you impact temperature? and then have, you know, resilience building, but also improve your health. So that's kind of our framework of new product launches. Do you consider yourself a successful entrepreneur?

Man, depends the day. Depends how I'm talking to myself. It's, which I think is sometimes healthy and sometimes it's, I need to, um, it's tough when you can't define what success would look like. Totally. And, and, you know, there's, there's always, I'd say challenges and fires. and it's like where my where as an entrepreneur I think it's natural to focus on what's wrong

and that's what I'm solving for I'm solving to how to improve so a lot of my attention goes there so it doesn't always feel like success I do think it's important to step back and have a moment to be like wow this is like something as a company we're actually intentionally trying to do now is like how do we increase the life of our wins like we don't really we can do better at celebrating our wins and so it's something we're looking at in the company right now because it's always, yeah, what do we got to go solve? The next big problem. So, man, that's my kind of cop-out answer

is, depends the day if I feel successful. I think that's fair. How big do you think you can get this thing? I think, I mean, this can be a, you know, this industry's, if you're looking at health and wellness in general, that's obviously massive. Yeah, it's billions. What the TAM is there.

But, I mean, this, you look. look at just contrast space. That's a multi-billion dollar industry that's evolving and emerging. I just look at the hot tub industry. Hot tubs are still doing five billion in annual sales a year. And that's a product that you're not buying every single year. You're not buying a hot tub. So there's like a 10 year. That's like a 10-year purchase for most people. Exactly. And so that's, you know, that's a directional category. And then I look at like the younger demo. And when I say, what's the aspirational purchase right now? It's a cold plunge. It's a sauna. It's some of like when I get a home, that's what I want to get.

So I think we're set up really well for kind of the long term too. I know these products work. I think we're, we just signed on with a really cool partnership with, yeah, University of South Carolina Medical Center. So we're going to start doing some really cool studies with a group down there that I think is, there's studies that are being done. But there's some preliminary stuff, especially around the cold, that I think early on that we're excited to go explore of really as the cold is preliminary

and this is no real results out yet but like unlike neurogenitive diseases so long-term dementia and some of these like we're finding there's a theory we have we have a theory around cold being a huge um basically a great tool you can use to we have a we have a system we have a gumflatic system so we have our lymphatic system and then we have this system in our brain that every night when we sleep it flushes out this toxicity that forms up around our brain so we have a bad night's sleep or we get stressed this area can build up and that over time is what can lead to some of like dementia or some of the even depression or some of these things down the road and what they're finding is neuropenephyrin is the flush to the system cold is probably the greatest onset of neuropenephyrine that you can put

into your body oh interesting so that's there's a we you're a we you're We see some strong correlation with getting cold and having that flush to your system. So if you have a bad night's sleep, getting cold is one of the best things you can do. Really? And getting your energy back, getting that flush to the system. Yeah, you still need to get that night's sleep the next night. And there is compounding issues. But it is a great tool to kind of reset your system.

It's a great tool for jet lag. You know, when you're off and you're kind of, again, kind of in that sleep capacity, hot and cold are both great there. So, you know, we want to study like how these tools are. everyone feels great, but like what at the core? What are they doing? So those are areas that we're going to be exploring over the next, you know, a couple of years. Hell yeah.

Well, I got to get you out of here because you guys get at Missoula. That's about 90 minutes. What do you want to close out with? What do you want to leave people with? Don't believe me when I talk about the Cole, believe you? My experience is only my own, everyone. This is just trauma coming through what I say. Yeah, totally.

I mean, like obviously, you know, home plunge and I don't know what I want to leave people with. You know, discover what works for you, man. Not advice for somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur. What would you give them? I would say, well, like have some self-awareness into like what you want to go start. Like, do you have the skill set or somewhere with all to do the thing? If not, I am big into go get around the people that you would want. want to, that have what you have or have or building what you aspire to build.

Maybe not the exact same company, but to me, that is our greatest, like, strength as a human when we get around our, you know, we are the sum total. We say the five people. Don't know if that's exactly accurate, but go get in the vicinity of, whether it's an online community in person. So that would be my first. If you're, like, looking to get started there, who are you surrounded by and really start there?

Perfect. Planage.com. Thanks for having me on, man. Go punish yourself. Get in. Get in. Perfect.