The Nick Bare Podcast - 077: Advantages of Sauna Therapy and the SISU Lifestyle with Pete Nelson II

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

In this episode, I’m talking with the founder of SISU Lifestyle, Pete Nelson II, as he shares the incredible journey of building his brand while maintaining a balanced family life. I discuss with Pete the health benefits of sauna therapy, the dynamic practice of combining saunas with cold plunges, and the crucial role of solitude and reflection for mental clarity. Pete’s story is committed to showing us all how to build a life rooted in resilience and simplicity. We discuss his upbringing and the resilience of his parents and grandparents instilled a relentless work ethic in him. He shares his father’s transformation from a long-time smoker to an ultra-marathoner and how it influenced him to push beyond limits and impart those same values to his own children. Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Live Better, Longer. Premium Saunas Built to Last. https://sisulifestyle.com/ Follow for more: IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/?hl=en YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Pete: IG: https://www.instagram.com/peternelsonii/?hl=en Topics: 0:00 Intro 1:00 Welcome and updates 1:57 Leading through action for your kids 11:08 Growing up with Dad 16:55 Setting an example for your kids 21:13 What is SISU? 29:07 Keeping it simple 40:00 The story behind SISU’s high quality standard 46:32 The benefits of sauna 56:39 Approaching using a sauna 1:06:16 The meditative benefits of using the sauna 1:08:47 Surrounding yourself with people that will improve culture 1:18:22 Be the change you want to see

I don't want to just blankantly use longevity as like the main selling point to sauna, but it is a genuine fear in the United States right now that people are not going to live a long life that's fulfilling with great health span. And people don't want to live to 90 years old if they're sitting in a bed from 60 to 90 years old. Like that's a fear of mine. Sona therapy specifically a lot of the research that has continued to come out between 176 degrees to 214 degrees is showing that there's amazing longevity effects on the body. Four to seven sauna sessions weekly results in a 50% decrease all-cause mortality rate compared to those who just sauna once a week.

Consistency isn't sexy, but it's like if I just continue to show up in the sauna every single day or four to five to six days a week, I'm going to be healthier. Okay, today on the podcast, we have Pete Nelson, founder of Sisu Sana, right where we're sitting right now, we have a CCSana that's probably 25 feet away from us here at BP and HQ. I've had my fair share of CCUs on us at this point. I love them. Love what you're doing. Pete, welcome to the show. Man, thank you so much. Appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, you might have the most amount of CSU any customer, but it's excited to sit here and chat. I believe in it, man. I believe in the product. And that's why I wanted to have you on the show today on the podcast. Talk about your journey,

building the brand, building the business. I love building businesses. I love bootstrap stories. I want to learn from you what you're learning. I want to share that story with other people. It's inspiring. I know it's hard. I know you're in it right now. But I wanted to kick off with the question to really dive in before we discuss any of that. As I was previously talking to you, I was listening to your conversation with Cam Haynes that you had, I guess a few months ago at this point. Yeah, April. And one of the things you guys were talking about in that episode is the important. And you only touched on it briefly, and this is why I want to dive into it because I think it's really important.

You talked about the importance of our children watching us struggle and driving through that struggle to persevere and succeed. Why is that so important to you that your children are? are experiencing and watching you struggle, whether that's through physical challenge, building in business, personal challenges. What is the significance of that? So when I have two kids. So my wife and I, we've been married for six years.

We've got a three-year-old boy and crew, a one-year-old daughter, Charlie. And growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, it's a blue collar. It's a gritty city. And so I got to see my dad who worked a middle-ways, just nine to five jobs. Same thing with my, same thing with my mom. Every single day, like, live below their means, but also at the same time, show me, like, what hard work actually looks like. And so my dad, when he would get back home from work at the end of each day, he would go out in the

yard, pull the weeds, mow the lawn, take the garbage out, do all the stuff that, like, isn't sexy. And I would watch that. And, like, that was the example that was set to me at a very young age and I got to see that compound over time. And then I got to a point mid, mid teens, where I had to start taking care of my grandparents at their house one block down the street. And so that's where I learned how to mow the lawn. That's where I learned how to flush out the, all the stuff down the basement, like all this stuff that would just get you nasty and dirty. Like, that was the stuff that I was doing. But then I got to learn from my grandpa, too, who was a military officer in the Marines of like this is how you do it. This is just what you do in Cleveland, Ohio. And so I got to

see that at a very young age. And then when I went out to college, you know, I was able to go play college ball for a second, college basketball. And then I got into CrossFit and then running. And I got to see like and got to feel like everything that my parents were working on actually be personified through the work that I was doing. And I got to like kind of latch on to that momentum. But it was like still that blue collarness that I loved. And once we had kids, it became very, very evident that the lifestyle that we were building could become probably too comfortable. And it's scary to me. It's a genuine fear of mine that my kids are going to have too comfortable of a life because of what we are affording them to do through what we're building with our company.

Yeah, it's great that we get to impact lives and stuff. But at the same time, it's, you know, like, yes, I get to take care of my family through this business. as a result. How can I make sure that my kids get that blue collarness to like get dirty and like work hard? And so for me, I'm super conscious about being on my phone around my kids. It is, it's something I continue to struggle with, but I'm very conscious with. Especially as a business owner. It's sometimes, it infuriates me sometimes like my tendency to want to pull up my phone while I'm sitting there while my kids are playing with their transformer toys. and I'm over there shooting a text to somebody after when I committed to my wife that like at four o'clock in the afternoon I would be done and like it's time for the kids.

And so I'm hyper aware of that and I think back upon like what I saw for my parents. And I just want to continue to cultivate that. So, you know, like I take my kids on runs with a double wide Iron Man jogging stroller and they love it. But the first couple times they were like like, Dad, what are we doing? Are we going to the park? It's like, no, we're going, we're going for a run. And once you continue to do it over and over, they don't know any difference. And so it's gotten to a point now where my wife and I, when we go for our runs or we go to

work out in the garage or we go to go to the local gym, you know, like our kids want to be there and they want to play and they want to run. And now like my son who's three just ran a mile around the block with my wife. And my wife didn't say, hey, go ahead and just go, go, run. I want you to keep up with me. No, he just willingly got out of the jogging stroller and just started running. It's amazing. It was the coolest thing in the world, man.

And so, like, me as a father and then my wife, Paige, is like, you know, we want to have more kids. But it's just utterly important to us that we lead through action and not through just what we're talking about. Like, they need to see us struggle. They need to see us hit that breaking point. Like, we went and saw my wife run three half marathons so far this year. This is, and it's a big deal.

deal for my wife. She just PR'd post-baby or post-second baby at the grandma's marathon up in Duluth. It's a good marathon. I was signed up for that a few years ago and they got canceled during the pandemic. It's a big marathon. I highly recommend it. And, you know, the two marathon, two-half marathon is part of that. We got to actually bring the kids to go watch and to see them light up when mom ran by and like my wife came over and gave both the kids a kiss. You can't put a price on that. And that's the stuff that they're going to remember, but also they won't know any difference. Right. Because this is just what they see all the time.

Yeah, I used to think that the goal of working so hard was to provide the opportunity for your family, for your children, specifically, to not have to work as hard as you did. I'm going to front load all this work so that you don't have to. But I had it so backwards. It's not providing your family and your children and generations to come with the opportunity to relax and be more comfortable, but you're putting in that work so they can see it so that builds values and a foundational system that they can then take, apply to their life to teach their family and their family's family. And it just, it builds and is this standard you set for, everyone after you. And earlier this year,

I've talked about this a lot, but we were pursuing a deal with private equity. And a lot of the reason I was pursuing this deal with private equity was to move out of an operational role in the business so that I could be more present

at home, didn't have to work as much. And as I started moving in that direction, I realized this is not at all what I need to be doing at this point in my life. One, I'm still young. There's still a whole lot I want to do.

But more importantly, my children, my daughter is still young. We still have children that aren't potentially born yet. My son is going to be born next month. And I don't want them to grow up in this life where dad doesn't really have a job anymore. He's just doing what he wants to do because he's done with that point of his life. That ain't it. That's the culture of your family right there. Right. So it's just like the culture of your business is rooted in action. It's rooted in through like people seeing you work. And like those are the values that you're enthralling through BPN. It's the same thing with with your family. Right. So it's like if your kids see that yeah, dad had it real good and he worked really hard, but now he doesn't have to work hard anymore. And like he just gets to like sit back and sit on the couch for the rest of the day and maybe go for a run here and there. Like what do you think like the kids are going to think about that versus saying?

And like, no, guess what? Like, dad runs a really successful company, but also at the same time, like, he loves what he does. And I get the energy from it every single day. But I also got to see him lead through action, not just, like, in my household, like, through the way that he treats mom, the way that he treats the kids, like, us. But he, the same way he treats the kids and mom is the same way that he treats everybody at work. It's just, like, consistent all the way across values, culture. It's all derived through action. And, like, dude, you've been a guy.

ever since I started following you back in the day it was like you've always been a guy through action you've always led through action you just do what you want to do it works action works yes but the thing that isn't sexy is the consistency like nobody wants to be consistently

like great at something it's just like uh like it feels really comfortable to work my ass off for three to five days and then you know take my foot off the gas for another couple and let's just do it again versus just being like you've mentioned in the past like consistently good that compounded in your family is how you become an incredible dad and that's how your kids 10, 20 years down the line when you're doing the toast at your daughter's wedding.

That's the stuff that they're going to be talking about. Right. As you were growing up, I know you talk a lot about your dad. Yeah. And he was a runner, hardworking man. I know you guys recently did an ultramarathon together, which, I want to get to at some point in this conversation. But growing up with your dad,

what did he do or demonstrate or what did you learn from him that has instilled the work ethic you have today? Where was he challenging himself? Where was he sucking? Where was he suffering? What did you see on a daily basis from him? So for me, it really started when my mom,

So my mom had epilepsy, and it really started when my mom and I and my sister got in a car accident on Christmas Eve. I was young. I don't remember how old, maybe five, six years old. And she had to go in for emergency brain surgery. So there was like a risk that she could pass through the surgery. But also my dad had to step up to be the true caretaker for not just my mom, but also the three kids. and through the process of my dad and having to like flip the switch to be like the primary caregiver, you could see like something turned on in his head.

Then he started getting more into philanthropic endeavors. He started because he became the president of the Epilepsy Association in Cleveland. He became the president of the Alliance Club for like blind people in Cleveland. It was he just started, it was incredible what he was doing. And he definitely had some sort of calling from God to be like, this is what I'm going to do. And when I was 17, that's when it really started to hit. My mom fully recovered.

My dad needed at that point a new thing to be able to challenge himself. And so for him, he smoked from, you know, chain smoke from 18 to 48 years old. When he was 48, I was 17. He committed to running marathons, cold turkey, from stopping chain smoking directly into marathon running. And don't get me wrong, my dad was a great athlete. but so his first ever 100-mileer he was 49 one year into his running journey that's when i did my first 50k and so it was a different so the same year that he did a hundred miler him and i both did a 50k that was my first ultra i was 17 just about the graduate high school my dad called me a pussy

halfway through the race because i wanted to quit and i'll never forget that because like here's my dad who's 48, 49 years old, and I'm 17 thinking I'm like hot shit. And, you know, here he is, like, continue to run past me. I'm like, I can't let this old guy beat me. And so, like, that's where, like, the competitive drive started to, like, really kick in for me. And then he did his first hundred, a few, a few months later at the graveyard hundred in the outer banks, who was from Corolla down to Cape Hatteras. And I got to pay some for the last 50 of that. And when I- You truly saw your dad in the pain cave. Hard.

But before those moments, did you ever see him suffering like that? Not quite like that, unless if we were playing basketball out in the driveway. We'd play like 33, one-on-one type of deal. And we would shed some blood a little bit, throw some elbows. And if the ball was going into the grass, we'd die for it and stuff. It was so fun. Like, that's just what we did. So it was always kind of gritty.

But that's when I think even he realized, like, I need to be more vulnerable in front of my kids. And when I saw him going across these wild horse grates by the Corolla turnaround point, it was mile 99, and like these grates were spaced evenly by one foot at a time. And his feet were just roached, man, like the worst blisters. And he took a step on every single rung of that wild horse grate. And the pain that he was in was indescribable. And like I couldn't understand. But like I was 49 miles into pacing him. I had never gone that far in my life.

So I was kind of bent out of shape, but not like that. So when he crossed the finish line, you know, like tears were coming down in his eyes. He's just like, man, I'm so proud. Like, he wasn't proud of himself doing. He's like, I'm so proud of you for being able to come and do this with me and be able to stay with me on this. And like, I learned a lot on that first race. And so that's continued to compound. And so since running that first marathon that he did when he was 48, he's on 145 marathons

are greater of distance since then. And that also included a cancer bout with tongue cancer. And then he had to relearn how to walk about a year and a half ago when he had a stroke in the post-opper room after his surgery to remove the cancer. So I had to help him relearn how to walk. This was right when our daughter Charlie was being born. And I mean, it was just so wild. And so since his cancer bout and his rehabilitation to be able to relearn how to walk, he's ran six marathons or greater distance since then.

and one in Antarctica. So it's like, I don't know, like, if I need anybody else in my life to, like, show me what hard work looks like other than my dad. Like, he just continues to compound, like, his action over time, but he loves it. And what's also so cool is, like, my kids get to see it. And he's got tattoos all over his legs of, like, different races all from around the world that he's done. Dude, I want to hang out with your dad. Dude, he's a legend, man, a true legend. And it's so fun.

It is so fun. But when I wake up in the morning and I don't want to run, I just think like, well, my dad, who just learned how to walk about a year and a half ago is probably out running right now. I should probably go for a run. I'm sure your dad's so proud of that. Like, I want my kids to look up to me in that same way. Same. Dude, same.

100%. And I want my kids to see me suffer in some sort of physical. challenge. I don't think work as defined by like the work we do professionally in terms of things we do on our computers or our phones or emails or meetings. You can work really hard of that and you can make a great living and you can provide for your family and it's very respectable. But I don't think it delivers the same message and intent to your children as when they see you in the pain cave sucking your 50 miles into a hundred mile race, your feet hurt, your soul was crushed, but somehow you find the will and the courage to drive

another 50 miles across the finish line. I want my kids to see me do that. Dude, I feel equally as much about exactly what you're saying as me showing love to my wife like in front of my kids too like growing up in a military family like it was handshakes there was no hugs there was no like i love yous or anything like i had to tell my dad like i loved him and that was like one of the hardest things ever had to do which is so crazy to say but then like like if i'm around our kids and our kids are like sitting on the couch like watching blippy or something like that and like if my wife and i are on our phones like we'll both like understand

like wait a second like this isn't right so like we'll we'll go like get the toys out play with the kids and then like I'll give Paige a hug and give her a kiss and say like I love you and like our son sees that and he like walks over to us and like leans in on us and like that's the stuff that like I want equally as much as like I want our kids to see us suffer. I want them to see like this is what love looks like because like I don't know part of being a man like you you have to like have both sides of the spectrum there you can't just be one sided and that's something I think like we I didn't have growing up that like now I'm realizing I'm trying to cultivate in our feet. family and I saw that from my wife's side of the family. Like when I saw like the best model relationship in my, my in-laws, like you can't ask for a better relationship than like what they than what they've had. So I'm like, page, I make it a point to like, this is what we do as a family. Yeah. I do think that's really important. You said that. I will admit that's something I could do a whole lot better at. Just acknowledging that and being very honest right now. That is one of my weaknesses. I had two interesting dynamics growing up. My dad's side of the family were all dairy

farmers. So it was very transactional in the way that you raise a family. It's like those kids were born pretty much to work at the farm. There was not a lot of I love yous. There was not hugs and kisses. I've never seen my grandparents on my dad's side hold hands. kiss, say I love you, any of that stuff. My mom's side, though, so warm and affectionate and loving. My grandma, like, the moment she saw you, she pulled you in, kiss you on the cheek and start crying.

Yeah. And she did the same thing to my grandpa. So I've had two different dynamics growing up, and I've always viewed both sides of the family so different. Same love for both, but just like a complete different feel. But it does. It starts with the leaders of the family, too. set that that foundation. That is something that I could definitely improve upon.

I mean, we all can. I need to. But I think we're just aware of it. I think it like it starts with awareness. But again, at the end of the day, it's like I want to live a really good life so my kids can live a good life. But like it needs to be rooted in like the foundational principles. Like you got to work hard, but you got to be a good person and you got to show love to the people that like actually matter to you. Right. If you could do that, you're going to be fine. But if you're not around and you're not exposed to a family that really shows love or really shows the opposite, where it's just like full on grit, like you don't know any difference. Well, I think that was a really good foundation that sets the stage for the remainder of this conversation. Because the way I view you building Sisu, I resonate with a lot in the way that I built BPN, investing in people, caring about the brand, trying to build.

a business the right way. So I highly respect what you're doing right now and the way you're doing it. I think it's very intentional, strategic, and smart for all the right reasons. But that being said, let's talk about Sisu.

Let's talk about their journey of building the business. I love entrepreneurial journeys, especially bootstrapped. Self-funded, self-started, making all the mistakes along the way. for all the right and wrong reasons and then learning from those and trying to get better.

What is Sisu? Man, so let's first say, Sisu is a Finnish word, and the Finnish word is actually a concept, and there's no literal translation to the English language. And Sisu means perseverance, tenacity, bravery, and grit. And so it's this Finnish concept that Fins specifically embody

through everything that they do. Ironically, in Finland, it is the, and arguably the happiest country in the entire world. But a lot of it is due to their ability to display grit and perseverance and tenacity based off the conditions of their environment based off of like their work conditions. But no matter what, at the end of each day, they go to the sauna to break bread. And so for every two people, there's one sauna in Finland. And so if there's an average of four people in a home, well, they have an indoor sauna and they have an outdoor sauna. And after dinner, they go to the sauna. And that's just where they,

they culminate the entire day and talk about what happened. And there's no phones. It's just, that's just what they do. They don't know any difference. And so that whole finish concept is what we've really built our brand around here in the United States because we believe that that's something that is lacking in the United States. And so that's where, you know, for us when we got Sisu up off the ground, you know, actually before we went even into manufacturing ourselves, we were a wholesaler for another manufacturer. And that's where we really learned how, you know, what sauna is. How do we want to market sauna? What are the types of sanas that people are looking for? What are the price points? How long were you doing that for

before launching Sisu? Yeah, maybe two years. Maybe a year and a half, two years. Was it going well? No, not at all. So I was a personal trainer, then became a manager of a gym, and then ended up owning the gym with my business partner, Tom Rini, Black Flag Athletics in Cleveland. And on the side, I realized that there was a need for sauna because not only did I know how I felt with sauna, like how I felt after in the recovery, but there's a massive way for us to be able to increase performance. And so through this, we ended up creating like this side hustle. through, so myself and one of our customers at Black Flag. And in that, we just started slinging saunas to people only in Ohio, because we had the rights to only in Ohio for this manufacturer.

And as you could imagine, Ohio's not the market for sauna. And we would probably sell one sauna every two months. And then COVID hit. And we had a period of time where we didn't have a single sale for nearly 12 straight months. So it was March of 2022. My business partner, Nick Dattis and I, looked at each other and said, this is kind of a waste of time. And we should probably dissolve this dealership, the wholesalership, and just keep going in our own directions. At the time, our gym brand was continuing to take off.

At the time, he owns a brand called University T's. He also, him and his wife were about to buy a local library and converted to a school called the Acton Academy, which is a learner-driven, like, entrepreneurial-driven environment. I know I've acted in Academy Schools. Yeah, so he opened up one in Cleveland. I've had Matt Boudreau in the podcast. Wow. Yeah, a great guy.

Yeah, I mean, I admire the model like no other. So we're just kind of going on our separate ways. We made that decision at 5.30 a.m. on a trail run in the morning, 10 minutes later on the same trail run, we're like, wait a second, there's a huge problem at hand here. Why are we having such difficulty selling salinas? And we just kind of, like, any entrepreneur does, you just start going down the list of like, oh, this is what I would do.

these are the ideas like what's the perfect sauna brain if we were to throw away the playbook completely how would it look how would it look or how would it feel what heaters would we use what products would be would we be doing and how could we approach it differently not just to be different but to like make it more simple and 10 minutes later after making that decision we ended up deciding at that point that the best next step for the evolution was actually to lean lean in even harder and manufacture ourselves. So we went from not selling anything to being like, how could we do this better than anybody else has,

but do it in a premium and simple way that's rooted in trust. Those are the three big pillars that we've built the brand on. So you didn't sell a sauna for 12 months, and the solution was to double down on saunas? Yes. What'd your wife say? She thought we were in for it. And she thought that, yes,

she supported us, but she thought we were crazy. It reminds me one of the situations, this is either going to be our best idea ever or our work idea ever. You are exactly right. No middle. And so we found the perfect manufacturing facility in Cleveland, Ohio, in Amish country, where we could handcraft every single sauna

and get wood from the United States in Idaho and ship Western Red Cedar from Idaho and mill it on site in eastern Cleveland and then be able to do so in four weeks and get it created and shift in four weeks but then also from a marketing perspective keep it stupid simple. So when somebody goes to our website

and they see our products on there, there's not a bunch of options. It's just whether or not it's going to be indoors or outdoors. Do you need a roof kit or not? That's it. And that's allowed us to be able to scale. So from March of 22 to August 1 of 2022, August 1 was our new launch date as the manufacturer, and we launched one skew. It was the Edwin barrel with no roof kit.

That was it. And then after the first 10 to 15 or so sales, we realized that we needed a roof kit. So then we added that variant for that skew. And then we just heard from our community that they wished that there was a two-person sauna. So we ended up creating the Eddie barrel, which is the smaller, version of the Edwin, launched that with roof kit and without roof kit on Black Friday of 2022. And up to this point, now it's July 4, July 5th. Those are the only two skews that we really have. We've had a shower. We pulled the shower skew just because it ended up creating some headaches.

And then we've got one other skew that's like a very, very niche skew with the woodburning sauna. That's my favorite experience. But at the same time, it's just not everybody's going to want a wood-burning sauna. So we've been able to build the brand off of two types of barrel saunas, or I should say two sizes of barrel saunas. And we've learned everything of like how to approach business, how not to approach business along the way. But most importantly, kind of like how you've always built with BPN. It's like the team, man. And it's been so fun building the team and trying to scale with preserving the culture. That's been the challenge, but also at the same time, the most fun part. Yeah, definitely want to talk about that.

Before, though, really leaning in and talking about simplicity. You know, we just, we're in the middle of our Fourth of July sale right now for BPN. And 2020, our team was significantly smaller than it was or is today. In 2020, it was one of our biggest sales ever. And we might have had like eight to nine people on the team. And in 2021, 2021, 2022, even 2023, our sales during our 4th of July and Black Friday sales were better. But the team was much larger. The business was larger.

And we kept looking back to 2020 discussing what did we do in 2020 compared to 21, 22, 23? Simplicity. We kept messaging clear, communication, customer, user journey. Now, that's just around a sale. Keeping things simple, keep it streamlined. The business as a whole, what I've learned is as you grow and scale a brand, a business, or any part of your life, the easy and natural thing to do is to layer on complexities, especially as more people have ideas and opinions and all these opportunities feel like really good opportunities. Complexity on top of complexity, on top of complexity. You see businesses do this all the time.

They start off and they launch 20 skews, 20 products, with each product having five variants, and they grow this massive catalog. And then when you do a year-end review, you realize five of those products are driving 85% of the sales. And the dozens of other products are not making any incremental impact on the business, but it requires so much time and effort.

And marketing spend. And marketing spend. So something we've done even this last year is, you know, I look at it as like pruning at the end of every year. Prune the business. Are there products you don't need? Are there marketing initiatives that aren't working? Are there departments that aren't necessarily efficient or effective?

You have to prune a business to allow it to grow. And keeping it as simple, which is not easy, but keeping simplicity at the forefront is so important, especially as you grow and scale. Because if you don't, you will crumble and you will break. The best businesses maintain simplicity. Apple, Steve Jobs, is a mastermind at simplicity. Yeah, when you look at the complexity of an Apple product into itself,

like, you know, me as the consumer, I don't care about what's going inside the computer. I just want to understand how to use it and it's intuitive. And the messaging for me to be able to like when I go into apple.com or even like Tesla, if I were to go in and want to buy a vehicle, I don't want to have this. I don't want to have all these options because I get decision fatigue. Right. So like for us, if somebody's coming to our site, like they are definitely interested in sauna. But also at the same time, like when they go through and you look at like some of our competitors like

where there's all these different types of like heaters and all these different types of like roofing, shingles and then you know what I mean like for us the fact that it's just really whether or not you need a roof kit or not and then everything else is this is what we've vetted out to be the best song experience for you at this price point like it becomes abundantly clear abundantly clear that for the customer they trust our opinion off of that but also like most of the people come to our site from guys like you or guys like eric hinman or todd Anderson and they value their opinion just as much. So it's like they see them using it. They're having fun and they're building this great wellness driven lifestyle and they're including people. But then they come to

the site and then they see like, oh, this is actually like pretty straightforward. Here's the sauna and I put it inside outside. Great. Add to cart and then it's shipped within four weeks. Like that simplicity is something that lets us scale. If there's one insight that I've come to agreement with and the entire team from the last three months is that complexity does not scale. and yes, all of us have great ideas. But at the same time, like when you know what your purpose is, you know what your mission is, and you know, like, for us our three pillars being like the premium simplicity and the trust, it's like, well, whatever we do, it needs to stay within those means.

So like we're not going to do something that's going to cannibalize on somebody's, or on the customer experience when they go to our site and all of a sudden they can't buy it because there's too many damn options on there. Do you have any examples of complexities you've layered into the business? that have been bad ideas as opposed to good ideas? Yeah, so at the very, very start, we had two different heater options, and there was a economy heater that was reliable. And then there was the Hume heater, which is more premium, very user-oriented and high-rock

volume. And so, like, we noticed that more people were buying the Hume heater just based off of our branding the marketing, but there would be maybe one in 10 people would buy the economy heater. So which now means like from an inventory standpoint, you have to have have like two different types of heaters, then two different types of like electrical setups, and then two different types of rock and enough rock to be able to ship. And so like what we realized right then, we were like, like you said, pruning the business. Well, if only 10% of our customers want that, why not just direct all of our attention toward this one, right?

and just make sure that not only is the heater reliable and premium and it's on brand, but we could just lean in even harder on the way that we manufacture our saunas to make sure that it fits like the heart of the sauna of the heater is perfectly fit for it. We don't have to like throw in a bunch of different ones. Now what I will say, because we are hitting like that two-year inflection point right now for the business, we could continue to do exactly what we're doing and not, you know, not bringing any other types of skews. But what we're realizing is not everybody wants the barrel shape.

It's an aesthetic preference for some people. Sometimes people want to sit up higher in a sauna where their feet are above the rock. And so it's one of the reasons why we're about to unveil our cabin saunas. And these cabin saunas are the exact same footprint as our barrels except there's two tiers. And not only that, but the experience lets for more natural light to come through. and it's more square. So like for us, if I want a square modern preference, great, there it is. If I want a barrel shape, there it is.

There's not heater options. It's just here's the heater. It stays true to our principles. It's just whether or not you want a barrel versus a box now. And so that adds complexity. But at the same time, we understand based off of the market of research that we've done is that we're going to be able to open up to a much larger market based off of an aesthetic preference and light preference.

So that is a level of complexity that we're going to have to navigate here over the next month, two months in terms of marketing on our website. And then we don't run any ads. So like the messaging on the ads is something that like we don't have to really worry about yet. But our email market needs to be dialed. Our social media needs to be dialed. And those are things that we're going to learn here in real time of like, does that messaging work?

Does that not work? You know, we're going to learn from our buyers like real quick. or not if it's confusing or not. But I think we've got a pretty good plan ahead of us. We have the barrel Edwin sauna, which sits like six to eight people. We've had a home heater in all of them. The one inside HQ right now, we obviously don't have the roof kit on. But I can imagine the cabin style one is going to be preferred more from like an indoor

aesthetic. I would much rather have that one indoor. because we love the barrel sauna, but does a little funky indoor. Yeah. Looks great outdoor. Yeah. But, I mean, what could end up happening? And I think I've reached points of the business right here where, like, say you launch the cabin sauna and everyone starts buying the cabin sauna and no one's buying the barrel sign anymore.

as a business owner who the product is your baby, it's really easy sometimes to be like, no, we're keeping the barrel. That's our foundation. That's our flagship. When everything's telling you, go all in on the cabin, I've done that with products before

where I'm holding onto a product just because there's some pride behind it. And all the data is tell me, just continue that product, man. Move on, build something else. Put your time into the hero skews and let some of these just go to sleep. Yeah, so for us, one of the things when we're talking simplicity, we knew that we wanted to keep the same construction process and assembly process and the buildout process the same as the barrel to the cabin.

So what we were actually able to do is make it to where it's like even easier. It's still like the staves that go around, but we made them in panels. So like when it showed up, it's the same crate size as the Edwin as the new cabin style saunas. But it lets our team and our Amish team be able to just continue to produce exactly what we're going to. we're already doing on the barrel side as we do on the cabin side. Like there's no difference in like the material differences. It's Western Red Cedar out of two by sixes, milled, convex, concave points of the of the wood.

And what we essentially did was be able to make it to where there's like four to five different staves all adhered together. And then you could just easily just put them right onto the panel, screw it in, and you're done. And so I'm pumped about that because it's simple for the end customer. It's also super simple for our team. and it's something that we could continue to repeat over and over and over and over. And we didn't have to like redesign the wheel.

Yeah, it's nice. Yeah, because the initial test phase of this was a completely different style product. Like our what I've sent you with our new cab and sauna is very different than what our first initial R&D products. Oh, I believe it. I believe it. It was almost laughable. And so I'm so happy because it feels like it's on brand. It's simple.

It's premium. But it's something like I'm proud of and I know that the team is proud of. And what's cool, too, is that we ended up locking down the names of the saunas. And it's going to be the crew cabin sauna after my son. Oh, nice. And then the Charlie Cabin sauna after my daughter. Super cool. Yeah.

So how did you get integrated into the Amish community? Oh, man. Because I'm from Central Pennsylvania, man. Yeah, yeah. You know, right outside of, I'm from Palmira, which is right next to Hershey. She's down the road from Lancaster. Lancaster has a huge Amish community. I mean, growing up,

horse and buggies everywhere. There were Amish bakeries and restaurants. And for two summers, I worked for Department of Transportation. I was a flagger. So I did like the slow and stop flag. And when we were working on roads, and there were like a combination of cars and horse and buggies coming through. So I'm very familiar with the community and their farms and somewhat familiar with their culture.

I know there's a big presence in Ohio as well, especially being so close to Pennsylvania. I'm curious. How did you guys team up? Oh, man. So the same day that we made that decision to pivot into manufacturing, the first thing that we thought of was like, who is the who in this, right? So I'm never thinking like how I'm going to get it done. It's really like who could put us in the position to be able to get this done the right way. And so my business partner, Nick was like, hey, my business partner at University T's, his dad used to work for an Amish manufacturer for these Amish fireplaces. And maybe you should just give him a call and just see what

happens. And so he sent me his number. I jump on a call with him and his name's Al Troier. And I'm talking to him. And he's like, you know, you know, Pete, I think there's this guy. His name's Mark. Mark Polari. He's a Finnish guy. And his dad's a first-gen fin. And he has this perfect facility. And he's a Christian guy, great values, family guy, works his freaking tail off. I think he would be, I think he'd be a really good fit. But I don't know if he has the ability to do it yet at scale, but you should definitely give him a call. So I'll never forget, driving to my best friend's house in Lakewood, Ohio, with my son in the back. I'm talking to him over the car speaker. And I was like, hey, Mark, I'm Pete. This is going to sound like absolutely

crazy, but we want to build barrel saunas. And we want to do it in a way to where it's simple, but they need to be Amish handcrafted because they need to be with the utmost quality. And Al Troyer told me that you're the guy to do it. And he's like, come meet me at my shop next Wednesday. We'll grab some coffee. We go out there and we chatted for a bit. It was becoming extremely clear that this was the perfect fit. The guy, Mark, owned a company named Sisu Designs two years prior making Amish handcrafted furniture. And he also has a 65,000 square foot facility for us to be able to partner with him on, to be able to bring this project to life. And he also has eight guys, Amish guys, to be able to pull this all together.

So Mark owns a facility that let us be able to get it completely off the ground. But that was like the initial phase. The next meeting, he came to my place in Lakewood, Ohio, and we sat in the sauna that we had back there from our old manufacturer. In our first business meeting, we all had not writing the rain notebooks, but like full on like normal notebooks, just writing down, you know, notes about like how do we want this to look? How does this feel like this is our business? You know, like how do we want to structure from a legality side? And we're just dripping on our notebooks and like the paper's sop and wet. And it was the most productive meeting I've ever had in my life.

Because everybody was, it was like the perfect who's to get it off the ground. We're like in that sauna. And it was like the impact that we knew that we could potentially have by doing this right way, it was there. And the way that we were able to get it truly off the ground from there was being able to get our first brain ambassador on. and that first brand ambassador Eric Hinman, he's from New York, but he's super familiar with the Amish community too. And so when he heard that like our songs were Amish handcrafted,

he was like, holy crap, like this is going to be something incredible. So I learned a lot from the marketing side of like, how do we respect the Amish community, but not let that just be like a huge pillar of how we market. It needs to be part of it. But the Amish community is just unbelievably well-respected. but they're super down to earth. We have so much fun together.

When I show up to the shop, everybody's just like big smiles, having a good time, like that they love building saunas. And the fact that we're able to push much, much more volume through and be able to see how they've gravitated toward like building their own culture

within the four walls of our manufacturing facility is like unlike anything. That's incredible. Yeah. I love that story. Before you started actually selling sanas, what was your, I mean, you were selling sanas, obviously, through like a wholesale distributor, but what was your experience and knowledge and expertise around the sauna and the benefits from? Or did you just enjoy sanas because of the feel you got from the recovery? Did you know all of this extensive research was out there? No, definitely not. And most of the research hasn't really come out until it was like 2018 when a,

this incredible report came out of Finland talking about longevity and sauna therapy. But at that time, I knew how I felt when I got out of the sauna. And I think everybody just, you know, like you and I, you know, if you don't know much about sauna therapy, it's just like, yeah, I know it's good for me. I just, I don't know durations or sets or, you know, protocols and stuff. I just knew that it made me feel good and made everybody else feel good. And there was an endorphin rush after. but that was it, that there wasn't anything really beyond that. And then really once the manufacturing arm started going,

I knew that I had to be not only well-adversed in sauna literature and the research that's come out, but I just wanted to be like a very unbiased guy on sauna therapy. Right. Well, we should talk about some of the benefits. I'm a big fan of the benefits of a sauna, and they're real benefits. They exist. If anyone listening does want to learn more about SANA benefits, I think Dr. Ronda Patrick is a great resource.

She has some really good podcast on everything, SANA. Benefits, how to use, when to use, duration, frequency, temperature. But then there's a few things we can probably talk about. One, we do know that the benefits. from a sauna are dose dependent. Yes. So the more that you use a sauna, the better results you're going to get, the greater risk reduction in disease such as cardiovascular disease, dementia, neurodegenerative disease

and disorders. It's like the sauna has been shown to significantly, if you use frequently, and often, reduce risk of like I said cardiovascular disease Alzheimer's I recently had max lugavir on the podcast who a lot of his research is around lifestyle intervention diet intervention for diseases such as dementia Alzheimer's what is your main selling point around sauna benefits usage time frequency all those things yeah I think when you look at it from like a health scape in the United States, specifically after the health scare that we've all had, like during the COVID pandemic.

And I think a lot of people had to look themselves in the mirror and look at their lifestyle and look at their family and like how long people are living. And so I don't want to just blankantly use longevity as like the main selling point to sauna. But it is a genuine fear in the United States right now that people are not going to live a long life that's fulfilling with great health span. and people don't want to live to 90 years old if they're sitting in a bed from 60 to 90 years old. Like that's a fear of mine. And so I'm more concerned with health span personally than lifespan. Yeah.

Like if I could live 70 great fulfilling years and I'm just rocking for 70 straight years, I'm pumped about that. Same. I feel the same exact way. Yeah. And so sauna therapy specifically, a lot of the research that has continued to come out between 176 degrees to 214 degrees is. showing that there's amazing longevity effects on the body. And what is fun, like you mentioned, is the dose-dependent effect of four to seven sauna sessions weekly results in a 50% decrease all-cause mortality rate compared to those who just sauna once a week. And so it's like anything.

Again, consistency isn't sexy, but it's like if I just continue to show up in the sauna every single day or four to five to six days a week, I'm going to be healthier. It's the same thing as a workout. Like, you know, for me, like, the sauna is a low barrier for entry because all I have to do is just go and sit inside the sauna. And I feel good during, and I feel good after. And there's a moment of that perseverance, that tenacity, bravery, like that CSU effect that you're going to experience in the sauna. It gets uncomfortable. It could get hard.

Yeah. And I think it's important. But what that teaches you, though, and what it encourages is more activity and better eating and better sleep. And I think that that's one of the. underlying principles, the sauna, is that it encourages you to do more. And I think that when you look at sauna, when you position it, like for me, ideally the way that I do it is I do it four to five times weekly at around 190 degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes at a time, about an hour prior to bed.

Because what ends up happening is that when I'm in the sauna, my body induces a fever of 100, 1002 degrees. And then post-sana session, I step out of the sauna. and then my body is going to compensate in the opposite direction to bring the body temperature below baseline. Well, it's the same thing that's happening when you're tapping into that parasympathetic nervous system state when you're in bed is your body's trying to cool itself off.

So what you actually did is you actually cooled your body off even quicker prior to bed. So you're able to get to sleep quicker, stay to sleep longer. And I think like to me, it's like, well, if I'm already getting the recovery effect of sauna while I'm in the sauna and I get the amazing like aerobic effects of sauna, because I'm in zone two basically, zone three sometimes, depending on how hard the session is.

It mimics exercise. Yeah, it's great. Now, I think it's an exercise memetic, but it's not an exercise replacement. Right. Yeah. Right. I want to be really careful to say that.

But, you know, like if I'm an aerobic athlete, if I'm a strength athlete, it's a great, great tool for me to be able to get my cardio in on top of the cardio I'm already doing. So it's not like you're adding, you can't run 40 miles. and then do two hours of sauna and say you ran 60 miles. That's not how it works, yeah.

But it will still have positive benefit on the heart, on your cardiovascular system, because heart rate increases. You sweat, blood pressure increases, very similar effects that happen to the body during exercise. Exercise, yeah. So to me, it's like pretty simple. It's like, how could we get more people in the United States?

it's sweating because there's an alarmingly high percentage of the United States that's obese. And so it's a lifestyle thing. And to me, it's like sauna is a lifestyle amplifier. Like whatever I want to do from a wellness standpoint, like it could be amplified through the use of sauna because it encourages me to exercise more. It encourages me to eat better. Encourges me to get better sleep if you positioned the right way. And then like you could amplify your sauna session by introducing a coal plunge too.

And so there's more and more research coming out about contrast therapy when it comes to just sauna and cold plunge alone versus together. But when you look at from like an anecdotal side, like to me, like when I have like my aura ring and like everything I'm getting back from like my sleep quality and data post sleep when I wake up in the morning, the nights that I sauna, it's no coincidence that my sleep is much better and I feel much better in the morning. I think that the biggest thing is if you are going to sauna at night, an hour or two prior to bed, You must drink water with electrolytes.

Otherwise, you're going to notice something in the morning when you wake up. You might feel a little lethargic. Yeah, I prefer using the sauna at night before bed. Yeah. But I have routine where I'll always get a sugar bottle, add electrolytes, mix it up, put it in the fridge. Yeah. Then I go out in sauna. Typically, 20 minutes, 200 degrees is where I like to set it.

Come back in. Well, first I'll sit outside and just let my body cool down. Yeah. Come back in, drinking my electrolytes, and then do my routine for bed. Last winter, we didn't have a cold plunge then. But the way our whole outdoor setup was is we had our Sisu sauna right next to our pool. And our pool had a hot tub, too. So what we would do in the winter, because the pool would get down in the, you know, low 40s.

It's cold, man. cold. We go from sauna to pool to hot tub. And we do a few rounds of that. Talk about shocking your sister. It could get and it's so fun to be able to host people doing that. That's what you deal. Like if you get six guys all together doing sauna, coal plunge, hot tub, you got like, you know, some good electrolytes like flowing through and like everybody's having a good time. You're throwing water on the rocks. Like that is that that is an ideal night. And, But I think that's like why like Finland, like the birthplace of sauna, like why it's blown up so much over there and why it's now starting to blow up over here is because people miss that in person relationship driven time without their phones. Because we're always like so on our phones all the time.

Like the sauna is so hot. You can't have your phone. No, you can. It shuts off. And like, but even if you can use it, you're sweating so much you can't use your keyboard. Right. Right. So like that that into itself is worth having a sauna for most people.

But I think like when you take sauna there, you know, when you take like a high heat room with great steam and great people, like that combination is like what they call Lolo in the Finnish culture. That is like the magic of sauna. And when you combine it with cold plunge, like there's nothing like a cold plunge that brings you to like the present moment. that's therapy into itself. A shot of espresso. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but there's no consequences. Right.

Most of the time, you know. And so actually my wife and I starting this coming Monday, when we drop our kids off at after, or drop our kids off at daycare, we're going to come back instead of going to grab coffee. We're going to start doing a coal plunge before we start work on Monday mornings. And like that's just our time together for three to five minutes to just do that. It would be hard, but it would be so fun.

It'll be like a way for us to be able to connect. And that's what we're going to do. And then we'll do sawn at night. So to me, like the perfect day would be you wake up and you cold plunge in the morning. And then you'd sawn at night. And then there would be an early morning run involved around that cold plunge. And then there's like a strength session around that like midday like lunchtime. Like if I could do that man, like life's good.

Yeah. Life's really good. I'll try to talk stuff into that. But well, dude, you got a month and, a half here and then she's going to probably not even want to look at a cold plunge for a bit too. Yeah, she's not a big fan of the cold plunge. We'll get like toes dipped in and then she's out. Yeah.

My first introduction to the actual sauna was infrared. So a few years ago when infrared sonnas were like blowing up online and became very popular, I jumped on it. You know, I got an infrared sauna, put it in the house. and I hated it, to be honest, because it would take me an hour to heat that thing up, and then I have to be in it for an hour to actually break a really good sweat.

I couldn't amplify the heat, and I would use it maybe in the beginning I was using it all the time. Then I got the point I was using it once a week, and then I wasn't using it at all, because when you're busy, you don't have time to turn it on, let it heat up, sitting there for 45 minutes for an hour. And then when I first used the, the Sisu sauna because the first one you sent to me.

And I remember I got delivered on my driveway. And I didn't set it up for probably four to six weeks. I almost flew out just to build it out. I told you like the first time I met you in person, I was like one of the biggest mistakes I made early on in the company was not to fly out to build it out for you to get you going. But the reason I didn't really like rush to set it up is because my experience with infrared was so. poor. I was like, man, I'm going to set this thing up. And I got to find a time to heat it and then sitting there for an hour. So then Jordan came over one day. We finally put it together, crank that

thing up. It got, I was like, holy, this is hot. This is heat. And what's nice is like, you have the apps. You can control it. I'm coming home from the office or I'm at dinner. I can turn it on the Hume app. Heat it up. And within three minutes, three to four minutes, I'm dripping sweat. But what I want to ask is the rocks. So when you add water to the rocks, because I'll bring people in and they know I'm going to dump some water on the rocks. It's the best. They're like, hey, Nick, just let us just chill for a second. Yeah.

Because I'll close those little vents. Yeah, yeah. And then I'll pour some water on the rocks. And in a matter of like 15 seconds, it is significantly hotter. Is that adding humidity to the air? Is that what that does? Yes. So when you look at like a perfect son of session to me is between like 180 to 190 with like 30ish percent to me like 30 30thish percent humidity.

So what you do is you essentially add the percentage of humidity to the amount of heat that's in the room to like create like the temperature. So it's like 210, but it would be like 180 with 30 percent humidity. Like that is no joke. And like talk about something that will just completely like bring everybody back down to baseline real quick. or like, you're just trying to ultimate equalizer. You're trying to breathe at that point.

Yeah. You start freaking out because doors closed, vents are closed, and you can't catch a breath. It's legit. Yeah, I mean, it's really a,

a heat barrier. So like for all the research, again, like I was alluded to earlier, it's like between that 176 to about 214, that heat range, that is ideal. But you can pour water on the rocks.

and like the best heaters have high rock volume, which means that there's more surface area of the rock to heat up the room and be able to maintain the heat. But you also like in a perfect sauna session, you want the rock to be able to heat up for at least an hour before you pour water on the rocks because then the rocks are going to be able to continue to hold the temperature. Right.

So like if you, let's say your sauna heats up in this Texas heat within 30 minutes or 25 minutes or 20 minutes. Like yeah, great, you could get in there. But I wouldn't advise putting water on the rocks then because you would actually cool off the rocks and then actually decrease the temperature of the room if you don't give the rocks enough time to be able to actually get up the temp.

Some of the best sauna sessions you'd ever have are where the rocks have been heating up for like three hours and they're scolding hot and then you pour water on the rocks and it's just like, it's no joke. It is no joke. And like the best sauna session I've done was out of a woodburning sauna because the rock volume's like 200, 300 pounds and you've got this like cast iron heater that's like touching all of the rock.

And when you're pouring water on the rocks, you see like the water like dance off the stones all the way down to the base of the heater. And it's just like this like all of your senses are heightened. But the other night I had a good buddy over and he poured he poured I think like seven to eight ladles of water continuously on the rock. And this is in the new sauna. And so when you're sitting up high, it got dicey really, really quick. but it's fun. We just sit there for 30 seconds to a minute after and you just just kind of let

the steam take over you and you, it's great. It's so fun. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever heard of anyone passing out asana? Yeah. So I have not, you know, like in my time seeing anybody pass out in asana, but I have seen people when they're doing sauna cold plunge get very dizzy and you need to like take a moment to breathe. I've gotten super dizzy before. Yeah. I had that happen to me a couple, a couple weeks ago. A perfect contrast therapy session typically would be like 15, 20-ish minutes in the sauna. And then you would have a five to six minute cooling period.

But in that five to six minute cooling period, Instagram tells you to go right from the sauna to the cold plunge, but that's not advisable. Rather, it's more like two to three minutes of being able to acclimate after the sauna session. So your body's able to come back down on body temp and come back down to baseline or closer to baseline. And then you get into your cold plunge. But people just want to cool off right away. So it's like you're going from like this vasodilation in the sauna to vaso-constriction, the complete opposite. So like all like blood flows like no other in the sauna and then you get into the cold plunge. And then all of the blood rushes right back to your cord and you get real dizzy.

You get a head rush. And it's euphoric, but also at the same time it's like I wouldn't say it's the most advisable thing. You want that couple minute interval between that sauna and cold plunge to be able to stave off that feeling of passing out. Yeah. when we used to do the sauna pool hot tub, we would get those feelings all the time. You have to stop, take a breather, take a break, reset, get some water, get some electrolytes because it does get kind of out of control or can get out of control pretty quickly. Yeah, it could get real nasty, especially when you got some competitive dudes rolling with you too,

because people want to stay in the sauna longer. They want to stay in the coal plunge longer. But that's the fun of it, though, too. To me, it's like some of my favorite ones are when I'm with some of my best running friends that are, like, busting out sub three-hour marathons because they could hang. And it just makes it fun,

throwing some good music, hang out. Yeah, one of the things that I like to do when it gets really hot and uncomfortable because every day can be a little different. I can go in and hit. 20 minutes 200 today and feel pretty good going in tomorrow and I'm suffering the first 10 minutes. So I'll try not to look at my watch. Dude.

For as long as I'm like, all right. I'm not looking at it. I'm like, I got to be close. It's like I'm probably at 19 minutes or now. I look down like 14 minutes. Yeah. And you're like, crap. It's the same thing with you like your nervous system.

Like you were just talking about like the Texas heat could just suck it out of you. So like when you're hitting a work. out and you had like that real good run the one day and you're like man like I'm on top of the world but then your nervous system just depleted the next day and you sauna like that's where I think it's super great to be able to say like yeah like I usually like it at 200 degrees but maybe today I take it down to like 190 180 and still get the great benefits of it but for me I struggle with that because I'm so competitive with myself I'm like no man like that's your baseline I'm the same way 200 and just deal with it so yeah you got to almost auto regulate your

sauna usage in the same way that you would your workouts. So that is a great point. And I would definitely say there's a couple like big time cross-of-a-games athletes that actually program sauna therapy sessions at varying humidity levels and varying heat levels as actual workouts. So they'll go in at 220 for 15 minutes at 10% humidity. And then the next day is like their zone two, recovery, aerobic day, and they're actually going to go into the sauna at 180 with as much

team as they can tolerate to keep themselves in zone two. So I'm not saying like I'm all about like being intuitive, but also at the same time like if you are going to get real, real picky about it, you know, you could wear a wearable so you could get that feedback of like where your heart rates at to keep yourself in that zone two. Like what, Todd Anderson did a 30 minute sauna session in our new cabin sauna the other day. And his average heart rate across the 30 minutes was 161. Wow. And he was in zone five for four minutes.

That's wild. So you could like, if that tells you that you could make your sauna ridiculously difficult, you can. I'm not saying like you need to every time. But if you want to have the choice to like have another thing in your training to be able to display your grit, build mental toughness, build aerobic, your aerobic condition. Like, yeah, you can easily do that. I mean, I'll be honest. When I go into a sauna session, I want to come out sucking. Just wrecked.

And I do. But my favorite thing is I come out of that. And I sit on a chair or a bench out of it. And I just, I chill that my body come down to body temperature. But when I was in bodybuilding prep, I guess almost two years ago now, when we were creating the YouTube series around it, I had this one segment of the videos. called post-sana thoughts. Because when I'm in the sauna, I can't have my phone. There's no distractions.

And when you start suffering a little bit, it starts getting uncomfortable, your mind will try to focus on something. I know that when my mind starts to run away from that discomfort, it's going to focus on something that's at the forefront of my brain. And it's probably something that I need to address or think about dissect. And then for the remainder of that sauna session, I'm just thinking about that one thing, trying to keep my mind off the heat and how the discomfort, how uncomfortable it is.

And I would come out of that sauna session with some really good perspective and ideas, thoughts. It was really meditative and good for me during bodybuilding prep. That's one of the reasons. I love it, especially at the end of the day. You've had a lot of things going on right before you go to bed. Have some clarity. The clarity in the reflection period, like one of my things I'm supposed to be doing that I don't do enough is journal.

Like, it's built in my day, but I end up, like, doing some other stuff that I probably shouldn't even need to be doing that I should be doing a journal. So like at the end of the day, similar to like a morning run for me. Like if I'm doing a morning run or that, that's on a session. It's super reflective. and oftentimes like whatever problems or issues we're experiencing the business, I could actually like take time to like run through those in my mind and create a solution after a run or create a solution after a sauna session.

It doesn't happen every time. But it's the solitude that I get from a sauna session. It's the solitude I get from a run that are very, very similar. And to me it's like an amazing productivity tool for me as I grow as I grow the brand with our team is being able to have like the 20 to 30 minutes by. myself or with my wife to be able to dissect some issues that are going on and be able to create solutions for it through that solitude. So kind of transitioning this conversation a little bit. I want to focus on from a family perspective, from an athlete perspective,

entrepreneur, business owner perspective, the importance of the people in your life. And another thing I heard you mentioned on the podcast with Cam, is like these key pillars to health. Train hard, sleep well, eat healthy, be outdoors, spend time with good people, let the rest take care of itself. Yeah, the rest is usually a distraction. Yep. And I believe in, I believe in that fully. Spending time with good people is so important.

The social aspect of that, being surrounded by good energy, good people, I'd say it's easier to do personally. Sometimes it's harder to do professionally. As you've built Sisu and things you've learned from your family, your dad, his mindset, mentality, as you've grown Sisu, you've built the business, you've added more people on the team, you've worked with more partners, athletes, potentially agencies. What are some key takeaways you've, you've,

you've learned and you've kept in regards to building culture, maintaining culture and the importance of the people you bring on the ship for that journey. So this is something I've never really talked about on a podcast regarding our team. We have more people in our family that work in our business than probably most businesses have. Mark has his two sons, Travis and Tyler. Nick has his brother George on our team who runs our sales department. I have my sister who's my EA. Blake, who's our director of ops, has his brother, who's our product support guy.

We just have a lot of people within the family where it's a one degree of separation. Now, I know a lot of people say do not mix family with business, but like I'm all about a good unconventional way about going about things. I'm not saying to just do it unconventionally. but what that forced us to do to me is like there's two pillars to like a great hire. It's the one degree of separation, meaning that whoever, if I'm looking to hire somebody, whoever I'm going to hire into the business needs to be somebody that is being referred into our business that that person could vouch for who is referring us to that person through trust. So like, if I reach out to you and you're like, hey, I've got this really, really good social media manager,

or there's really good email marketer. I want to know your experience with that person. I want to know what went well, what didn't go well, like what were like the bottlenecks? What weren't the bottlenecks? Like, what did they do really, really well? If there was like one thing in your organization that they did best, like what was it?

Like I want to know that stuff. But what that did, it put that hire directly into a position of trust where like where I trust you, right? As like, is this relationship like built like, I want to know. And like whoever I'm bringing in, like, I want to know like everything I need to know about them. But two, they need to be a GWC.

A GWC is a get it, want a capacity to do it. So the one degree of separation mean, you know, through your referral, but also the get it, they understand the concept, right? Like they have complete competency to be able to carry out whatever that process is within the company. They want it. So like there's a genuine desire to want to do it. Like this is their passion.

And then they have the capacity, like the actual time to be able to complete it. So if they don't cross off all three of those and if it's not a one degree of separation at this point, it's not the right hire for us. And it's really black and white at that point. It's a yes or no. So anytime when we're building the team, it's usually out of referral, do they fit this mold? And then that's where we go. And it's usually the process is what we're hiring for. It's not necessarily the person.

So like when you look at the company at a totality, you look at each specific process. and then that process is what you're hiring for it. So it's like, how can I find the correct who to own this process, who loves the process there, the GWC for that process, and then they could own it, and then they report on it, and they just love it. And that's what we try to hire for. I think that sometimes when you start to hire people

where there's not a process that is well outlined, they have like two of the three, like they get it, they want it, but they don't really have the capacity to do it. And it's from somebody that you just like found, online, sometimes the waters get real murky. And then that's how the culture starts to get real messed with. And our biggest asset is our culture. Our biggest asset is our relationships from that culture. So if you look at the number one predictor to the health span now and lifespan too is relationship equality. Like, well, when I show up to work every day, I want to be able

to like love the people I'm hanging out with, be able to be extremely transparent. with them. I want them to be transparent with me. And like, here's the issues. How do we solve this together? So hopefully that answers the question. I think like that's the biggest thing is hiring is hiring could be really, really stressful. But at the same time, like, when you have your process of hiring and you understand your filters, a lot of good stuff could come from it. Yeah, I know you guys practice EOS in your business. It's really important. Entrepreneurial operating system. We implemented EOS a few years. ago, we don't follow it fully anymore, but we still have a lot of the functions that are still

in place. I guess one question for you, you know, because one of the foundational principles, fundamentals of EOS is, like you said, create processes and then fill those required roles with people and not create seats just for people, which I made the mistake of early on. there were people that I was friends with I wanted to give them and provide them an opportunity in the business so I'd bring them on and I'd create a role for them

and then I quickly realized we actually didn't need that role so I try moving them into a different role and creating a new job and eventually you just have the part ways which gets so messy have you at any point in these two years since starting CSU realize that a process is no longer needed

and had to eliminate roles overall, but more specifically for a family member? No, which is good. I think that we continually go through, like you mentioned before, pruning the business, but part of that is like you look at your organizational makeup and you look at the chain of command through it all. And you just continue to look at the processes. One of the best exercises we ever did was, identify the entire customer journey from top of funnel to bottom of funnel to post purchase

to maintenance to the whole thing. And so like along that we plotted every single one of the processes that we hire for that not only internal processes but also like customer facing processes. And like that's what we've optimized for. So up to this point like we haven't, we haven't needed to like fire a family member or anything like that. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that like if there ever has become an issue, it's usually not the person that's the issue. It's usually the process because it wasn't clear enough or the process just evolved too much and it needed to be refined. So it's like, you know, there's been a couple instances where like I would be really fed up with like a, the way like a process was performing

the KPI's weren't tracking for that process. And it's like what the heck is going on. You like you want to point fingers. But then like, you know, me being me, I'm like, all right, well, hold on a second. Like, let's take a step back. Take 100% responsibility for what's happening real quick and look at the process. This person's doing this, but the process is calling for this. Like, where's the discrepancy? How do we solve for that? And so, like, that's where it's just simply, like, sitting down with the person looking at the process and be like how, like, this is where we're performing? Like, how can we make this better? Like, where do you see the bottlenecks? One of the best things that we ever did was actually three weeks ago. We started doing these

closed the loop emails. So every single person on our leadership team sends me a closed loop email. that tells me what they did for the week, what they're going to do next week, what bottlenecks that they're experiencing, issues that they're experiencing, any projects or rocks that they own with the status and notion for them to be able to link to. KPI's. And then lastly, is anything that the business would benefit from right now in their eyes. And I get that every single week. And it just gives me a pulse on everything that's happening. And then our leaders, our leadership team is able to then work with each department underneath them to be able to pull that information, to be able to best put things objectively for the business

in a way to we're able to continue to grow it. There's no perfect business. Every business has issues and it's always messy. I don't care what anybody says. But that clarity that we have has let us be able to understand and make better, more informed decisions and also be able to keep a very clear communication line with everybody on our team.

I was on this. I think that's great. It's very intentional. I was on this hunt a few months ago and on this hunt was founders and executives from businesses that range from you know, a couple million

to multi-billion and private to public. Broad range. But meeting with these founders and these executives, what I learned is, like you said, no matter what business, where it's at, there's always pieces that are messy. There's always pieces that are being worked on and improved. We never have all the

answers. But what I learned on this hunt was just that, you know, I was talking to these business execs, multi-billion dollar organizations publicly traded that are having the same issues as a company that's doing a five million in revenue. And I'm like, you know what? This makes me feel really good that I'm not alone. We're all going through. There's evolution's business. trying to maintain a really, really strong, healthy culture. Because if the people are happy, typically, in most cases, the business is going to be happy. And the people believe in the business, the consumer is going to feel and see that, and they're going to believe in the business as well.

Culture is like this lofty thing that gets thrown around all the time. And I think a lot of people look at culture thinking that, it's this thing that you buy or you lease and you inject it into the business and it just permeates throughout. But it starts up top, starts with leaders and primarily developing and hiring the right people to bring the right people, put them in the right seats for that team. Culture is this always living, breathing thing that is made up of the individuals of the organization.

And everyone has an obligation and responsibility to maintain. and build and hold the standard of that culture. So if there's a culture you don't like in the organization you're part of, you have the ability to make the change. Yeah. You have the ability to raise your hand and speak up. But don't just let it get worse. Actually be the change that you want to see.

Yeah, no, you are 100% right. And I think, you know, like for me, like it's easier for us to say like, yeah, like we could build culture because like we're leading our organizations. But it's a completely different scenario when like, you just got introduced to an organization that has like 30, 40 people and you don't like the culture that you're experiencing. Like, you know, if you are a leader, like, yes, you could speak up, do it in like a very respectful way or change.

Like, change your environment. One of the best things you could ever do is like change your environment when things get, like, when you feel stuck, changing the people you're around or changing the environment you're around is an easy, easy way to be able to like have jet fuel on your life. And I saw it, you know, for me personally, like, when I was able to, like, when I was able to start going around the U.S. to visit, like, different people that were partnering with on the brain and be able to see their lifestyle and, like, see what makes them tick and, like, gravitate toward that. It was like, oh, man, like, I feel like I've been, like, operating on reserves. Like, I need to lean in even harder on, like, the stuff that I want to do because, like, I get to see the way that, you know, Nick Bear trains. Sweet. Like, I could pull some stuff, be a sponge around you and be able to apply it to, like, what I'm doing. It was, like, Just to be able, like, see the way that you approach something. Like, maybe that's going to push me into, like, that next phase of, like, my entrepreneurial journey.

Right. You know, so it's just like, again, I realize that not everybody has the opportunity to be able to just, like, immediately put themselves around people that are, like, super successful. But I think that you start by understanding, like, there needs to be a change. And if you're not around some, if you're not around people that are, you know, successful or people that you look up to in terms of values, like create that for yourself. Like, be that person that, like, attracts the people around you to want to live a higher value life. So there's, it all just starts with change, though. I agree. Well, Pete, brother, I appreciate it, man. Thanks for the good conversation. That was good. The great sauna sessions are about to go train. It's going to be fun. And I can't wait for it. Can't wait, man.

All right, man. Thanks for being on here. Appreciate your time.