The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 67. Immerse Yourself: Cold Plunging for Energy, Focus, & Mental Health with Plunge Co-Founder Ryan Duey

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Key takeaways you’ll learn in this episode: What are the biggest benefits of cold plunging? Is colder better and what are the best protocols? How they built Plunge to over $100,000,000 evaluation. Use code “Ultimate” for $150 off your order of the best cold plunge & sauna in the US: https://bit.ly/3yYE3vl Follow Plunge on Instagram: @plunge https://www.instagram.com/plunge/ Get weekly tips from Gary Brecka on how to optimize your health and lifestyle routines - go to https://www.theultimatehuman.com/ For more info on Gary, please click here: ⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/thegarybrecka ECHO GO PLUS HYDROGEN WATER BOTTLE http://echowater.com BODY HEALTH - USE CODE ULTIMATE10 for 10% OFF YOUR ORDER https://bodyhealth.com/ultimate Have you been on the fence about cold plunging? Gary Brecka is sitting down with Ryan Dewey, co-founder of Plunge, to discuss how cold water therapy can improve more than just your physical health. From mood enhancement to weight loss support, learn how three minutes of cold water immersion can provide benefits that last all day. Ryan also shares his entrepreneurial journey from float therapy to building a $100,000,000 business centered around making cold plunging accessible and mainstream. Whether you’re looking to improve your mental health, have deeper sleep, or improve your energy and focus, this episode is for you! 00:00 - Who is Ryan Duey and how did he start Plunge.com? 04:30 - How being sick pushed him towards cold plunging. 08:30 - What brought Ryan Duey and Michael Garrett together as co-founders. 13:00 - How to prepare for an Ayahuasca journey in Peru and the impact it left on him. 17:45 - How did they build Plunge.com to over $100,000,000 evaluation? 28:00 - What is the future of cold plunging? 34:00 - What are the biggest benefits of ice baths? 37:20 - When is the best time to do a cold plunge? 40:00 - Why they believe that cold therapy is a mental health tool. 44:45 - Is colder better and how long should you stay in? 49:50 - Why Gary believes we’ll be able to live over 120 - 140 years. 51:55 - How are they incorporating new technology into their products? 54:45 - What is the mission of their company how do they grow culture? 01:00:00 - How they incorporate their 5 core values into their company's culture. 01:04:50 - The time he peed his pants on a podcast. 01:10:00 - Why Plunge added saunas to their product line. 01:16:00 - Why you should incorporate gratitude into your daily practices. Follow Ryan Duey on Instagram: @ryanaduey https://www.instagram.com/ryanaduey/ Gary Brecka: @garybrecka The Ultimate Human: @ultimatehumanpod Subscribe on YouTube: @ultimatehumanpodcast The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So today's guest is someone who's I'm happy to call a friend. And I will tell you, man, I think you guys make a very sexy cold plunge. It makes you feel better. And you go work out hard again the next day. I can literally tell right now just in how cognizant and alert and clear and awake that I am. That had I not done that, I wouldn't feel this good. You know, before coming on, I always like reading, like talking to our customer experience team, like give me the coolest stories what's happening.

It was at least 10 years. Had had a migraine headache, the minimum 25 to 30 days per month. Done every option you can think. Got the cold plunge, 18 days, they've not had a migraine headache. One thing we are seeing is that women tend to be... Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Today, we're diving deep into the chilling world of cold therapy with none other than Ryan Dewey, co-founder and co-CEO of Plunge. Ryan has transformed his personal health challenges into a thriving business that brings the rejuvenating power of cold water therapy right to your doorstep.

From launching his first float center in Sacramento to creating a multi-million dollar empire around cold plunges, Ryan's journey is nothing short of inspiring. Let's plunge into his story and uncover the cold hard facts about this fascinating wellness practice. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host Gary Brekka, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Today is going to be a special treat for you guys because arguably my favorite modality, you've heard me talk about this millions of times, I call it my drug of choice because nothing makes me feel better for longer. And I know a lot of you guys agree, and that is the cold plunge. So today's guest is someone who I'm happy to call a friend. He spent the night at my house last night, and we actually did a whole morning full of biohacking and breathwork and

sunlight and cold plunging. And I think the absolute world of his company, his product, the market-leading design that he's and his partners have come up with and the impact that they're making on the cold plunging world. So welcome to the podcast, Ryan Dewey. Thanks, Gary. It's good to be here. And so you're the co-CEO and co-founder of Cold Plunge. And I will tell you, man, I think you guys make a very sexy cold plunge. Thank you. I really do. I use it every day. We used it today, not together. But I want to back this story up because I feel like you guys started at around a time when cold punching wasn't as in vogue as it is today, and maybe even not even as widely as accepted or as mainstream practices it is today

so talk a little bit about your your journey from what you were doing before to how to this this segue into the into the cold plunging industry yeah it was before i mean before plunge launch which feels like we've been here a while but this was post-pandemic you know we launched the country company in sept September of 2020. My co-founder, Mike and I, we both owned brick and mortar, basically float tank centers, float spots. The sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation.

We had saunas and he had cryo at his. So we had kind of, we were in health and wellness, biohacking. Were you guys part of the same franchise? No. Just independently. Very different. So Mike and I are, you know, we have, our souls are aligned in a very unique way. Like we've had very similar life

experiences and that's for another story. But anyways, he was opening in San Francisco and this was back in 2016. There's no, you know, float tank center was a very rare thing. And I was, uh, or he, the 2015 he opened. opened, and I saw he was opening. I was opening in Sacramento. I drove down. I walked in. He's working the front desk. I said, hey, man, we're going to be friends.

There's an entrepreneur working the front desk of his own business. So he had same very interesting life experiences that had happened to lead him to opening this facility. And I read his story. I was like, that's my story. I was like, who is this guy? So I went down and met him and we just became buds. And there was no like business relationship. It was strictly friendship.

Like we were, you know, I got to see how he worked. He saw how I worked. We did some big, a big nonprofit fundraising for MAPS, the Multi-Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which had been like a big impact in our life. So we got to like do some events together. And so then, you know, we have our businesses, things are going well, 2020 hits. And all of a sudden we go from having our businesses to they're closed down. And he just happened to move to Sacramento. And your question of like

cold plunging at this time, it was like, I was doing a river, like my low American river in Sacramento. That was where I was getting into. river, like my low American river in Sacramento. That was where I was getting into. I had kind of got led to cold plunging through. I had started getting sick in like in 2018 or 2017, excuse me. I had like six colds in six months. I thought I was a healthy guy. I was like, what is going on? I didn't quite understand. When you say sick, what was going on? It was like a cold. I was getting these like consistent colds. Didn't, I'm sure there were some underlying dynamics, but at the time, my health mentor was basically like, why don't we just incorporate some breath work and let's start getting you cold. Let's see where that takes us.

Really? And, you know, a couple months, boom, I wasn't getting sick anymore. So I was like, okay, I'm fully, I learned about Wim Hof and I was totally like, I was attracted to just his energy and what like, you know, the pursuit that he was on. So I was attracted to just his energy and what like you know the pursuit that he was on so I I believed in it but then I saw it firsthand with my body so I had my kind of moment with cold um and then Mike similar to him he was uh he'd got attracted to it through similar thing kind of chasing rivers he'd gone on this road trip through the Rockies and it had like he basically got addicted to it he was like what I was doing it every morning out of my van.

And he got home, he's like, I have to keep doing this. So he kind of built his own chest freezer. That's kind of his mindset is he's the engineer. But you talk about the sexy product, he's the guy behind that. And so we both had our stories there where this was very impactful in our life, but it wasn't like a business thought at all. Pandemic hits, he's sitting there and he's kind of like, we're looking around, there's like, there's no cold

plunge on the market. Like there were, but they were $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, like very unique, kind of, you know, almost look like Etsy projects, like very, you know, different, a totally different look. And so we were kind of looking around like, you know, have these moments like, is it us? Should we do this? Is this actually opportunity, actually, Starence? And I assume you weren't sitting on a big pile of cash at this time. No.

So we, so Pandemic hits with business shutdowns. First time in our life, we actually have a little time, you know? And so he starts designing this product in the garage. It's literally out of the garage. He's sourcing bathtubs. He's sourcing off the shelf parts. He's just kind of put Frankenstein in this thing, but really starting to like hone in to like what works here. And so he approached me and he's like, hey, what do you think when you want to do this? And at first I was like, no, the product wasn't to a place that I, I didn't really have the vision on a product side that he had. He improved it,

came back. This was the summer of 2020, and I was finally like, all right, let's do it, man. And so it was literally like we turned a website on. We bought thecoldplunge.com for $10. It was a unique time. You bought thecoldplunge.com for $10. $10. And you have to look back at that time. It's like cold plunge is this term now. It seems like it's in the zeitgeist. It's everywhere. If you looked at Google Trends at that time, like ice bath was a 10x search over the term cold plunge. Ice bath was the term that I do in ice bath. I take ice baths. In our group, it was all cold plunge. So we just went all in. The company was called Plunge. We bought the coldplunge.com for 10 bucks. And we're like, we're going to bet everything on this term because that's how we speak

about it. And that's what we're going to make big is the concept of cold plunging. Get away from just the post-athlete ice bath where you're suffering through it. It was a totally different experience for us than that. And that was a huge win for us. So then like our first month in this garage, we're top of Google, we're getting phone calls. And so now we're really, the company start, we're getting connected to certain people and the company grew. Obviously the company grew really quickly

and cold plunging in general just really started to take off. And that was like the accelerant for us in that summer of, in fall of 2020. And then, you know know here we are now four years later so you you you said something earlier that uh caught my attention you said that you guys had similar paths beforehand um like similar life journeys what to back up a little bit and talk about that because clearly a friendship ensued before the business relationship

ensued but you know you're both in the float tank space, but what, if you're comfortable talking about it, what kind of journey was that? Because you will hear me say all the time on my podcast, I think some of the greatest inventions, innovations, medicine, technology, they come from people that have solved the problem in their life. You know, like, you know, your journey with just being sick all the time and you have a health guru that says, hey, let's incorporate some breath work and some cold plunging. And that had to be part of the hook that set. And I've had just some fascinating entrepreneurs on the podcast, some of them making groundbreaking technologies in the health and wellness space. I mean,

I just had the founder of Whoop on, no medical experience, but here he is creating a device that is very likely going to save a lot of lives down the road as they innovate it into even more of a medical device than just a wearable. So talk about that journey. Yeah. I mean, for me, it started where I had a serious accident in Thailand, probably about 12 years ago, a head-on collision, very, you know, speedboated to an Island, was in the hospital for three weeks, kind of one of those, like very life, life and death situation. What kind of injuries did you? The main one was like a brain, but really my jaw was separated into two and they had to do like a pretty emergency surgery on me. So I have this life altering experience as life does when you have that happen. Right. I'm in a

Thai hospital, mouth wired shut. Can't really speak to anyone. I'm there for weeks. So I have a lot of time to think. And so that event led me on a journey more from a spiritual side and like kind of discovering, it was like, it accelerated life. Like what, I had a job I liked. I was working in the sports industry. I was into it, but I was like, what are all the things you are putting off in this world that you want to, like that you want to do now? And there was a very clear one for me, which is I wanted to go down to the Amazon rainforest and work with ayahuasca. It was like, this was about 13 years ago. I didn't know a single person in my life that had done this. It was a very different time than where I think psychedelics are in the

zeitgeist now. But I was just so called to it from a personal transform. Like I wanted to learn more about myself. And this was like, that seemed like the greatest adventure of my life. And I was like, you'll do that later. And I was finally like, no, I'm doing this now. And so I came home, flew home from Thailand eventually, caught on the path of recovery.

And that led me to a float tank. So I started to get into a float tank because first I wanted to prep to go, I was gonna to go in a year. I had decided I'm saving up. I'm going down to the Amazon, to this facility down there. It's a very, you know, had to wire money down to a Peruvian bank to be able to get down there. But I was like, okay, let's spend a year of like meditation and like prepping my mind and my body to go down there and to get my physical body ready. So that's what led me to the float tank. And so it was very serendipitous. Um, ended up going the next year down to Peru had, you know, a life altering experience of just, um, you know, understanding myself, knowing things I wanted to go after,

which is this, you know, that's what accelerated when I was like, oh, I'm going to go start a float center. Like, I want to go do this. It wasn't immediate. There were some things that transpired, but I was clear into like, this has changed my life. How do I give this more? Like, it was that paradoxical situation of like, I wanted to do the most selfish thing, which is I wanted to get around other like-minded people. So I was like, I'll just build a place and they'll come. And this has changed my life. I want to share it. So that was like my path to opening Capital Floats

in Sacramento. Well, where Mike and I's stories are unique, he has a life-altering experience in Thailand. He ends up going down to Peru to drink ayahuasca. This is all within two years of each other. He goes and starts a float center in San Francisco. We have these three very distinct standalone things. And now we, you know, run Plunge.

Right. You know, the leading and cold plunge company that we've come together. And so, you know, that was, and I read his story online. I was like, who is this man? Like, who is this guy? Yeah. And we've been, you know, simpatico sense and gone through a lot together. So yeah, those were- Talk about that experience a little bit because I've never done the ayahuasca. I know lots of

people that have, and the majority of people will say the same thing that you do. Very transformative experience. But what is it that's so transformative about that? Is there a time that you're seeing your life from the outside kind of looking in? Is it because you've sort of suspended all of your inhibitions and you're actually able to have this moment of clarity where you go, this is what I want to do with my life? Or you find all these things that are holding you back? I mean, for people that have never done that, had that experience, even though it's a lot more popular, obviously now than it was 11 years ago. And I think that, you know, there are some very prominent athletes,

celebrities, you know, A-listers that have been public about their journeys with ayahuasca. But what was that experience like? Was it frightening? Yeah, it's everything. It's terrifying. It's the most peak experience

and everything in between. It's a tool It's terrifying. It's the most peak experience and everything in between. It's a tool that I use. It's somewhat consistent in my life. It's definitely like a, you know, every so often I'll enter into that and it's kind of my look under the hood. Like really what's going on here? Like, you know, get into the subconscious. I think it's a great, for me, it's an amazing tool in mindfulness.

So there's an acronym called RAIN. And I actually just go through this process whenever I enter into ayahuasca. And it's like, you go in and it's just, what opens up is, it's the ultimate roll of the dice. You don't know what's coming. It's like, as much as you think this is the issue, there is a lot of other stuff going on. And it allows me to enter in and reign.

Basically, it's like recognize, like I go in and it's like, it can be the most terrifying experience. It's like, okay, I recognize, I recognize where I'm at. Bring awareness. And like, I bring awareness. Okay, recognize I'm terrified.

Okay, I become aware to that. Okay, you've become aware to that okay you've become aware you're terrified how do i integrate and allow the terror like as opposed to identifying with the tear i can like see the tear and it's just this like and i actually don't even know what n stands for i literally when i work with it it's like i end it high but it's this amazing tool for me and it's different for everyone so i don't't, this isn't like, uh, this is what ayahuasca is, but for me, it's always been, what are these things that I'm identifying with? And I'm like attached to, and that's usually where my pain is. That's usually where my suffering is. And I can start to see it separately, process it, observe it for what it is,

not be so, you know, electrically charged by it. Um, and so that's been, that's been an amazing tool. Plus it's like, I can go on and on. I mean, it's, it's been, when I first went down, what the big one was, was like relationship with my parents. Like I went very deep into understanding, like just the deep, deep love that they've like given me my whole life, like to this place that like of gratitude, I cannot, like they, I've never questioned love. They've like given that for me. And so that was like my, you know, had a lot with my parents on that first trip. Deep appreciation for them then.

Deep gratitude. Things that I just could never have seen as a child and probably still don't even fully see. But as I don't have kids of my own, but like getting a taste of like, oh my God, like what my parents have given and offered me and, you know, sacrifice, but not even sacrifice because they felt they had to sacrifice. It was like, no, just pure love. And I feel like that's kind of been rocket fuel for everything I've been able to go after. Like, I feel so blessed and grateful and sometimes lucky where I'm like, oh, I've never questioned love. And it allows to go chase these big dreams and try and spread it more and give these things into modalities that matter to me.

Wow. Are your parents a big supportive force in your life? They're huge. They've always been. They don't always get me. I've definitely gone kind of an opposite route of them. But they've always respected and trusted me they got to think that you built something really special I mean they've got to

at least appreciate the impact you're making on the world now they love it I mean now they have a cold plunge they're all into it which is great they go floating which is like if you know my parents just thought with it you know you're right and they're like they're a little more pragmatic they're floating dates and now they have their plunge outside. My mom's all into it. Like, it's awesome. So they're, it's cool to see it like kind of enter into their life and the impact it's having on them.

Shout out to the, shout out to the Dewey's. Yeah. So, so you guys decide in, in this, during the COVID pandemic, you know, like you said, you weren't sitting on like a, sitting on a war chest of cash. So how do you creep into this cold punch space? You get the URL and you decide that you're going to compete either on price point or on utility,

what have you. But I mean, how did you even go about deciding where are we going to get this manufacturer? Like who can build a cold punch? You pick up the phone and start calling the manufacturer and say, can you build me a trailer? It's funny. We tried. We thought that was the route. So there were a couple early wins, like the white acrylic tub that we've become the original one.

I literally remember that when you guys launched it. Literally. I was like, when you started searching for it and it would come up on Google, that one would come up and instantly I would click on it. Just that modern, minimalist, and it was both sides were slanted, I remember. The tight angles. And so that is funny. The largest freestanding bathtub facility happened to be 30 minutes from us in Sacramento. And they had all these tubs. And so the early tubs, not the ones we sold, but we would just go buy, Mike had a van, and we'd go buy one at a time and they'd kind of have extra

ones so we could like work on the product. And it was like, we never had to front munch a lot of cash. We never had to like, we were just able to bring one back, we'd build it. And then it was like, you know, we decided let's sell 20 of these to our float centers. Right. Business. I had since opened back up. Mike was still closed. And we're like, we'll just email them and say, hey, this is a project we've been working on. We would love to sell 20. We'll hand deliver to your house. And so that was our game of like, let's just learn the product. Let's take it to our first customers. We get to shake their hand. We get to look at them. We get to connect with them. And we really built, we just put ourselves at the front of this company. We didn't go, we went founder forward. Like, you know, if there's ever an issue, we're going to make it right to you. Like that is 100%.

That's great. And so, you know, we had a lot of learnings and we moved really quick. And so that was our first 20. But like I said, we get this URL, we start to start ranking around. And then there was just interest around, like, so we're in the garage, we are trying to call some of these big manufacturers to say, hey, we, we have our bill of materials, we know how to build these things, we got sourcing already down, are you down to, because we just took a lot of off the shelf stuff at the time, we hadn't engineered what we currently have, we hadn't engineered a full on, like system yet. And we just, yeah, we kind of put one together that made sense.

Started calling manufacturers. Of course, we had no size and scale for any of these people. So we just, but we had orders coming in. We had people calling and putting orders in. And so we were like, we got to figure this out. Yeah. So I call someone I know, can you come down? I knew this guy could work on cars.

Can you come down and start building it? And we just started building this early on. You know, it was like, we still have some of them on the team. It was just like, can you help? Can you help? Can you help? I knew a guy, hey, can you do customer support for us? Like we really just built it very, very quickly in our first year. Bootstrapped. I mean, it was the true Apple stand. We had enough, you know, we bought enough for one plunge. We sold that. That gave us enough money to go buy two more plunges.

We bought two more. We sold two. And we just built it that way. In our early first couple of years, we had a lead time. So we were able to cash flow the business through our lead time. Now it's since grown much, much larger. But there was total... Mike and I only know...

We come from brick and mortar like that has to be profitable like there's no there's no game around that you got to execute really clean and so that was kind of our we built them all we built the business like okay let's how do we go for speed but also be not get ahead of our skis um and so that was the uh that was the win and then you then we get into this we, we went really deep into our influencer partnerships. So we were early on with DM Aubrey Marcus, and he's like, why don't you fly out and set one up? And that was our first unit we ever shipped was to Aubrey South. That's expensive when you're starting out as an entrepreneur, to give product away, to give your time away, to actually go and do it. I mean, you have to do it to kind of get exposure.

It was the founder, 100%. Our big thing was we rented these U-Hauls and we would drive down to LA. And we had a lot of partners down, Rich Roll, people that we really respected. That was the key here of like, who are people that have given so much to our life and that we know are like high integrity, high value people? If we can connect with them and, you know, and if they would share this with their community, that would be huge. And so we'd go down, drop in with these people. And, you know, they thought it was the coolest thing. They were so grateful.

And then, you know, we'd be like, hey, who's your friend? Like, we would love to be there. And so then we were, you know, at Rich Rolls, down to, you know, we had Andrew Huberman's, and we're at Tony Hawk's house. And it's like, it just snowballed in this like kind of six month window. And I think it, you know, publicly,

it looked like we were a lot larger than we were, where we're still this kind of like very infant company, six, nine months old. And at this time, you weren't manufacturing your old coal plunge. You were still buying. No, so we would buy all the parts in bulk. And we had, we basically built these assembly lines. And we would just do assembly lines. And then that's, that was really the, you know, the early, we call it our V1 product that was there. And then

really quickly, we started getting a lot of data. We started getting more input and feedback on a coal plunge that the world wanted. And so that was a very early on and Mike and the engineering team, and we hired an in-house engineering team and went after it. And that's what led us to like all of our current products now. Like this is all in-house engineered based off of the data points that we've received from thousands, tens of thousands of people on like what they want in a cold plunge, what they don't want, what's what's not working what is important um and so that's yeah but early on we were just like assembly line build them get them out yeah and you had one version right yeah we had exactly i think we we made a second bigger tub so we had two chillers but it was very

this was it um you know since the product portfolio has gotten a lot wider, which is a big part of our focus now, is how do we make a cold plunge for any use case, any budgetary reasons to space, to location. And I got to say too, man, whoever does your product animation now is spot on, man. It is just, I use the term sexy. It's just super sexy.

It's just very crisp and modern minimalist, and it gives you a good fundamental understanding of the product. So whoever is taking your ideas and bringing them to life, I mean, the electronic domain is doing a great job. I love that conveyor belt look to how you guys assemble the cold plunge. I mean, I was very attracted to it. Ben and the marketing team will pass that on. Right off camera, big shout out.

Because I think when you have a consumer product, I mean, they don't get a chance to touch it. You don't have a retail location where they can come in like a car lot and test drive and touch it and see it and feel it. So you have to create that imagery online. So, you know, hats off to you guys for that. But so, so you're, this is before you're actually manufacturing in house though. This is before you take, take things in house. And I always love the entrepreneurial

journey because, you know, there's, there's, there's gotta be some be some points along the way where you were like, man, I don't know if we're going to make it or we've got to take this big gamble on going into our own manufacturer because that's a big, big step. And it's usually a lot of personal risk because business doesn't have any credit.

Only you guys do. And so talk about this, you know, the transition to becoming a real company, meaning instead of using parts and parcel from other companies and slapping them together, how did you roll it into bringing manufacturing in-house? Yeah, I think so Mike was doing, Mike was the team early on and he was designing and even the, the all in that you have here, the unit that was like his first iteration. So if you look at the iteration before we were in a company, it's like, that was kind of what he was prototyping. So it's really interesting to see that now like coming to fruition.

A big step for us, we were designing and engineering and working with some outside design teams that he was leading was his cousin happens to be a world-class. He was the head of engineering over at MakerBot, which was one of the world leading 3D printing companies. And so he started to help Mike into some of these calls like we would talk with other you know these outside manufacturers and people in the design front and uh anyways dave gets into cold plunging he lives in new york city and he gets a cold plunge and he's like i really love this and we basically were like what do you you want to come over here which was a huge leap for him to come from this, like these very established, he was actually working for another huge company at the time. Well, you know, billion dollar funded business to be like,

hey, do you want to come in the cold plunge industry? And he did. Join our startup. Yeah, exactly. And so he's been instrumental in like building out our internal team now into like actually, you know, which has been essential for us as we've increased this product portfolio of wanting a product in commercial space. There's a whole new compliance

and regulatory dynamic that goes into it. But bringing his expertise into it, that was huge. We made a big hire with our VP of production at the time. We basically hired these people that had been in these really big kind of legacy industries, brought them in.

And Mike and I don't have that background. We ran float centers. You know what I mean? That's why I'm so fascinated by this journey. Yeah. You're sort of reinventing yourself and the business at the same time. 100%. I came from brick and mortar service business

to a online product business. They are completely different animals. So yeah, I have had to learn. I'm learning as fast as I can right now. You know, they say timing is everything. I mean, in retrospect, your timing probably couldn't have been better. You caught the base of that sort of parabolic growth curve

because it went from being very obscure to really being mainstream. I had dinner last night with the founder of Whoop, and I forget if it was last night or this morning, he was telling us that there's been like a 300-fold increase. In logged cold plunge sessions. In logged cold plunge sessions. And that's people voluntarily adding a cold plunge session to their whoop tracking to see like what kind of

metrics are coming out of cold plunging totally i think it's still like we were in the second to third inning of still this like brand new industry i would totally like it's it's you know i think we're outside of like the our first customers were just like those early adopters you know like they were there they're already doing oh my god there's someone actually building one like for like for at that prime five thousand dollars with they didn't really exist and so they you know that kind of accelerated now we're getting to um it's just a it's still but it's still it's still so early yeah into the people like we go out i like to do this thing where I'll go walk the floor and I go see, read the names.

Who's, I got John in Missouri that's getting a unit. I got, you know, Jenna out of North Dakota. Like I go and I just make these stories of in my head of like. Most of us have a very difficult time meeting our protein needs and certain protein sources like whey protein and others can be as little as 20% absorbable. This is 99% absorbable and it has all of the essential

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their products. They've got great electrolyte protein combinations. My favorite is the Perfect Aminos, bodyhealth.com forward slash ultimate. And now back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. This is the first unit in this neighborhood that this guy's going to show up. And like, you know, this is like the brand new thing that he's going to be the outlier. All the neighbors are coming over. Yeah, exactly. And then you actually hear the stories of like, oh, now we have Sunday hangouts that used to be beers and darts. It's we cold plunge in and connect.

It's a different form of connection. It's just, that's the stuff that I still go out. I'm like, this is the first time these people, it's the entry point for so many of these people to see what cold water can do for them. Yeah. You know, it's, I remind my team about this all the time. Like, you know, when you, when you live in this world where the people you associate with and the accounts that you follow on social media and all of the, you know, information that you're digesting is all about your industry, you think that it's a lot more mainstream than it is.

And you get slightly outside of your own sphere and you realize most people really don't even know what cold plunging is. The majority of Americans, let's just say, for example, we talk about biohacking, longevity, anti-aging. Most people don't even know what those terms are. You know what I mean? Outside of our sphere, I find, you know, I try to make a conscious effort to not be the ultra-woke biohacker that just wants to talk to other ultra-woke biohackers, because those are not the audience that needs us. The audience that needs us are the ones that don't know. Like the audience that needs you, the people don't even know what a cold shower is, much less a cold plunge yet.

And so I think I totally agree with you i think we if uh we were to look at your total sales versus total market you'd see a parabolic opportunity still huge opportunity even ahead of you guys and i think it's like to your point on the language of how it's like it's very easy it's a net negative to sometimes use those words, you know, into like the biohacking. It's like, what is like, we try and be really, at least for me, it's like what, you know, norepinephrine and anti-inflammatory and these things that's like to the everyday, like, I don't know that sometimes that doesn't even resonate with me. I'm like, what does this actually do? It's like, well, it makes me more focused. It makes me a better business partner. It makes me a happier person. I feel more happy about my... Things that

are really tangible. That's what I get so... I mean, of course, this is why I have the company, but it's like two to three minutes and you get these like incredible impacts that are just, I, I just don't see in a lot of other things that I do. Yeah. Let's actually talk about that for a minute. I mean, there's, um, lucky for you. I mean, I think that the, the science and the evidence is catching up to the benefits, you know, things start out very anecdotal or very subjective, meaning somebody goes, I feel better. I'm sleeping better. And we're not, you know, there's no way to really measure that.

We could measure that, but now you can. But, you know, the whole idea that you go from these subjective things like I'm feeling better to now you see that there's real science, you know, behind, behind cold plunging. I've often argued that, you know, cold plunging is an amazing way to kick off your weight loss journey. And I don't think that there's been any randomized clinical trials, you know, that have had a control group and a non-control group and looked at specific weight loss with the only variable being changed as cold plunging. But when you look at sort of

the myriad of benefits, it stacks up to healthy metabolism and weight loss. I mean, if you're activating brown fat and you're exchanging a calorie for heat, meaning the cost for the heat that you're getting back in your body is a calorie. Okay, well, that's a good thing for metabolism, a good thing for weight loss. Now, I was reading a really interesting article about some of the specific cold shock proteins, specifically LIN-28A and LIN-28B. And these particular cold shock proteins the liver releases are having positive impacts on insulin, making insulin more sensitive and less resistant. And, you know, insulin resistance is one of the,

I mean, you want to talk about a pandemic in our country. I mean, we have a pandemic of insulin resistance. People don't know it. The blood sugar is out of control. Their insulin is out of control. And I mean, that's a dead impediment to losing weight. So if you prove that, you have another sort of arrow pointing at weight loss and it improves your metabolism. And I know how I feel and you know how you feel, but now there's evidence that does raise dopamine, right?

So it's helping to give you that endorphin boost, the runner's high. I mean, I always call it my drug of choice because nothing makes me feel better for longer. So do you see that now that there's more evidence, where do you see the adoption of cold plunging going? What's your fastest growing market segment right now? Is it gyms?

Is it? The gyms I'm super excited on, kind of this B2B side of like, that's probably how this scales out even more. You know, that's the entry point for so many people. Not everyone has the backyard wellness center built out, but a lot of people have gym memberships. And if I look at like how to accelerate this,

that's a huge front for us. I think from the, from the core customers, it's like we run a lot of pre-purchase surveys and engage our potential customers. And it's still workout recovery is still this, like what intrigues a lot of people. Absolutely. It's like, that's a benefit that you can get into.

That's obviously there's a lot of debate on should you plunge right after your workout or should you wait? That's where do you fall in that? I fall. Um, I, I think it is a, I get cold where I can get cold. Um, I live a healthy lifestyle. I'm not training to be the most elite athlete. Right. And I think if you are, it's a different conversation. Well, you and I used it as a sleep hack last night. We got in, it was like a 60 second.

Like we didn't go super long. We weren't like pushing redlining in the cold. We did a steam before, maybe 15, 20 minutes. And then? Then we hit it for about 45 seconds to a minute. And I slept great. I didn't sleep long last night, but I actually slept really good. And so I think there's different ways to utilize it.

But for the post-workout recovery, the debate that's there, I don't really wade into it because my personal is like, you know, I talk to other people like, you know, we have a really good relationship with like Kelly Starrett and some of these like really big people in, in recovery and everything. And it's like, it makes you feel better and you go work out hard again the next day. If it's doing that, then great. Like, don't be overly concerned if you got your max gains on your muscle, on your muscle growth, or, you know, if you're, if that's what you are striving for and you are a lead athlete, sure, you probably want to space it. There's some evidence to show. Maybe take three hours. Yeah, you hear different things.

Again, but I'm more of, I am trying to live a robust, happy lifestyle, work out hard, but I also am not training to be an elite athlete. And so to me, I find it to be more personally, more of an excuse of getting cold than actually doing it. And if it's that big of a concern, do it before. Um, but I, I tend to be like where I can get cold. Cause I know what I feel afterward and how my life is accelerant from there. It's not about just getting cold.

It's like the momentum that's created created then you know i i just get in where i can get in i still literally feel the uh the plunge we did you know this morning we sort of repeated the same um metric you know you and i and and will you 15 20 minute steam and then three four minute cold plunge um and i i can literally tell right now just in how cognizant and alert and clear and awake that i am that had i not done that i wouldn't i wouldn't feel this good and i always said you like went in before and then you came out like oh i don't know and then i jumped on him because he was warm i was like come here and i feel these cold hands but um so i i you know i agree with you the market market is just exploding.

But when you start, you're also getting data, right? You're getting data on large pools of customers. And part of me really thinks that when you get large pools of real-time data, this is as good as any clinical trial ever conducted because you can take voluminous amounts of data and you can look at trends. And you can look at how many people are reporting weight loss, how many people are reporting feeling better. And so what kind of data are you getting from your customers? How is the data and the feedback kind of shaping the direction of your business? Yeah, I mean, like I said, it all starts with workout recovery and it all goes to mood and energy. It's a mental health tool is number one, first and foremost, what I think this is like

every person has seen. So that's what we like from a focus standpoint that's what we really focus around and and uh and that's also the in the data that you're seeing like people are reporting man i just feel a lot better mentally it's emotionally totally it's you know and it shows up into different statements of um you know, I'm happier, I'm more, I feel more energy, I feel more connected to my family, like these things that's like, that's how it shows up in the real world. We also see these like very unique, you know, I think our nervous system impacts us in so many different ways when we have a imbalanced nervous system or something's off there. And so, you know, when you get in the cold, there has this regulatory dynamic to it that

is, it varies for so many different people. Like I was just, you know, before coming on, I always like reading, like talking to our customer experience team, like, give me the coolest stories, what's happening? Like, what have we heard lately? You know? Yeah. I was actually going gonna ask you that yeah one was someone uh it was at least 10 years had had a migraine headache for 25 out of the minimum 25 30 days per month really had done every option you can think non non-surgical. You talk injections, you talk

modality, you talk biohacking, you talk, they have done the gauntlet. Got the cold plunge, 18 days, they have not had a migraine headache. In a row. In a row. And they were like, this is, look, I've done it all.

I was the guinea pig for the world on migraine headaches. I don't know what's happening there. I can't sit here and say, I'll let other people debate. That's a signal. We get a lot of people with thyroid issues and a lot of autoimmune disorders that are going on, which is also important to caveat. Like I say, if you have an autoimmune... The cold cold is, you know, it is adrenaline. You want to start out at a spot where it's like, you're not overly stressing your body out. Right.

Like this is a stressor, but there's an edge for every person to find your, like, what is the stress point that you can actually stress, but also relax into it. Right. So, you know, we've seen it's important for people that turn to this for different autoimmune issues they're dealing with don't go jump in at 39 degrees right and think this is going to solve your problem it's like actually start at maybe 60 right start at 65 just like ease in like i think of it like uh you know working out for your muscles like if you haven't been working out in the gym your nervous system is the same thing it needs to develop and so you know you haven't been working out in the gym, your nervous system is the same thing. It needs to develop.

And so, you know, you wouldn't go to it. I wouldn't go put you through a CrossFit workout if you hadn't worked out. Right. That's going to hurt you. You can hurt yourself. You can have a net negative impact. And cold plunging is the same way.

It's like treat that your system, your nervous system, like you would your muscular system. Like get in, find a temp that you're going to show back up tomorrow and do. Right. Let's just get off the couch. Let's get this system turned on.

Let's get it used to this kind of stressful environment. Yeah, hormetic stress. Exactly. That you can learn how to relax into it. And so, you know, I think that's a big misnomer in cold plunging that this is like a suffering exercise. And to me, it's the exact opposite. This is, yes, it's a resilience builder and I can do hard things.

But if you can't relax into the environment, you're at too high of a threshold. Like you are not at a spot that this is having a net positive for you. And so I think if anyone was to take away like starting out with cold plunging, everyone asks, like, how do you do it? What do you do?

It's like find a temp that takes your breath away, but you can find a way to regulate your breath in there and just follow that lead. You will naturally lower the temp. You'll find the temp that works for you. Don't go stress yourself out to a spot that you were just redlining the whole time. It's not what lot of evidence that much colder is better or much longer is better. where three to six minutes, you know, when people ask me, I always tell them 48 to 50 degrees, three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum, just as a guideline, because I just haven't seen any evidence that longer is necessarily better. I mean, and you know, we're not trying to become

cold adaptive. We're trying to cold shock the body. So three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum, 48 to 50 degrees, which we talked about this morning is about where where you set yours but do you see the evidence saying any anything different do you feel like colder is better longer is better you said you're going to send me a snorkel today so i could actually go in and do the full immersion experience i i don't i haven't seen again we're still early in this. Like you said, we talked about studies and yeah, there's more coming out, but it's still, we're still in some anecdotal, like figuring out off numbers. And I haven't seen that number and it's more

based off the individual. Like we have these generalities. One thing we are seeing is that women tend to be from a, what's, and this is again, a general statement, but women about seven degrees warmer, like as opposed to men. And, you know, like, and this is, we've seen this across the board of a lot of women. It's like, it's too cold at one. It's not, it's a net negative for their body at that point.

Right. So raise the temp up. You know, a guy plunging at 45, it's just different. We all have different bodies. We have different. More insulation, muscle. Yeah, exactly. So it's a very... It's something I get excited on this. It's like, yeah, we can give general protocols, but there is this self-discovery that you kind of got to get the unit. And that's why you got to get the unit. You got to find the temperature that works for you. You got to fight the dose, the duration. Like there's a bit of

journey discovery for yourself. And that's why it's a big difference, the dose, the duration. Like there's a bit of journey discovery for yourself. And that's why it's a big difference, I think, from showers. Like when I'm on the road, I'll take a cold shower. But a cold shower is very different. You don't know the temp that you're getting. It's not one that you can really surrender into. Like you can't actually, it's tough to really relax into a shower. Yeah, it's just hitting you.

It's not concentrated over your body. So they're very different experiences. I think it's a great way to kind of feel, like you talked about the dopamine and come out feeling more alert. Yeah. You can get that from a shower, but it's a very different experience than a full body submersion.

But yeah, anecdotally, it's like we find majority of our customer base in that like 48 to 52 range into temperature. That's like where a lot are. We see a lot of people jump to 39, 37 to start because it's kind of what the zeitgeist is. Then they naturally raise it up. Maybe not so naturally.

Maybe they just raise it for. Exactly. It's like, you know, what, yeah. It's like, what is the, you know, what gets you back in each day? And so you kind of got to figure out your body. But I say that the two signals you look at, don't overcomplicate it.

Does it take your breath away? Great. You want that. That's a good temp to start. Can you regulate your breath in there? Usually, ideally within 45 to 60 seconds. What you go from there, then there's some different, you know, debate in studies out there of kind of what the length of time will do yeah you know is the longer maybe more for brown fat activation potentially that's in there um you know even though you do see evidence for prolonged exposure i it's more of conversations with experts in places that have yeah brought that up um i think it's again it's still what i get excited on is like we're now in talks with some of the major institutes and kind of organizations around the country that would do these type of studies. And there's actually interest now.

That's what's really exciting is that, you know, now mainstream science is starting to get behind it and put more evidence. And that's always the anecdotal that leads to that. Like I came from the float tank industry. I got into floating just because what it made me do, what it made me feel, it wasn't some study that told me, which is, that's just who I am. I don't necessarily, I kind of, I'm curious, I want to try it. But then floating became a hugely studied area. And what it was doing for the mental side of it. It was great. It was quantifying, um,

you know, what everyone was feeling. That's great. Right. Cold is getting there now. It's like the, look, everyone that gets a cold,

like gets, starts doing cold water. Like they love it. They absolutely like has this massive impact on their life. Started it and doesn't. Yeah. I mean, there's things you want to be aware of when you're getting in,

obviously like heart conditions, some't. Yeah. I mean, there's things you want to be aware of when you're getting in, obviously, like heart conditions, some stuff like that. But I know it works. And now it's the exciting part of like, okay, let's go actually start to quantify why this worked for you in this way, why this worked for you in that way. Right. And I get real excited over the next 24 months here, what we're going to see. Yeah, so do I.

What we're discovering. Yeah. over the next 24 months here, what we're going to see. Yeah, so do I. What we're discovering, yeah. I was actually just on a previous podcast talking about if you're alive in the next five years, which most people listening to this will be, then easily we're going to live to between 120 and 140 years old. Because early detection, science, artificial intelligence, mapping of the human genome, and real-time data on large pools of people is all converging now.

And so we have real actionable data that I think in the next five years we're going to see three centuries of medical advancement. You know, you got artificial intelligence that can, that can crunch 700 trillion independent data points and, and create an actionable item out of it. You know, I was actually just looking at a wearables app and they've got AI integrated into it. And you can ask the AI questions about your own metrics in this app. And I think it's just so exciting because people will see that these hormetic stresses that we put on our body actually strengthen us, like cold water. They not only improve our mood and our emotional state and obviously wake us up, make us feel more clear and more awake, but they have actual positive physiologic outcomes in the body and it's a relatively easy thing to do. So what do you see as the next evolution of cold plunge?

Where are you guys going? I know we just put a deal together, which I'm super, super excited about. And I love that you guys have answered the entry market price for most consumers because price is a barrier for a lot of people. To be able to get into cold plunging for 99 bucks, that's a whole lot different than getting in for 10 grand. So talk a little bit about, you know, where you expect the journey to go with. Yeah, to that, I mean, the accessibility has always been kind of our number one excitement between Mike and I. Like, how do we get just more people cold punching?

Like, how cool is it? And so, you know know that has been our journey of getting a wide array of price options for people so there's like this short term like we're really close to we just released a new series that kind of created some new price points we're going to even get more options out here um much sooner than later right um and that. So that's like step one. Like, how do we just be the one-stop shop for wherever you're at in life from a financial perspective, your living perspective,

the space that you have, your personal size, like everything, like having this one-stop shop. So that's there. I think where we also get real excited on is like, you know, we want to, I get really excited. So we have our app, like all of our products now are like connectable to the app. And so there's just cool functionality that comes with that of, you know, whether it's the sauna, you can have it

scheduled on to turn on at 7am when you wake up and it's hot and ready or driving home and you want to turn on for your wife or have it ready for yourself same with your cold plunge you can do different temps for you and your partner that's cool but where i also get really excited on is like how do we turn how do we make a true like smart uh smart plunge like you know you have your whoop. Now as we understand this more, your HRV is changing every day. What is HRV? Okay, there's a lot that's wrapped up in a recovery score there. And so, should you be plunging on the days that you have a really low recovery score? Maybe, or maybe not, but maybe it should be a little, it naturally should warm up. Can the unit get smart where it's actually feeding off of your body and it's showing up when you wake up in the morning,

hey, Gary, your sleep score was incredible. You are ready to rip today. We actually brought the temp down two degrees for you. And we recommend that you go a minute further today and you're ready and your body can take that dose. So it gets, you know, it starts to get really smart with the biofeedback that we're getting, because that tech's out there. Yeah. Now how do we integrate? And then the science is kind of this next piece as we learn more and more for each human of what they – and then they can kind of program their system, and the unit's kind of giving them feedback there. So that's kind of the big roadmap where I see this.

The convergence of technology and the modality itself. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. That's super exciting. And I have a tendency to believe the same thing. And the product suite that you have now that's getting the price point down to the masses, I think is going to just open up a whole new market for you. I read something, and you don't have to validate this if you don't want to, but I read something recently that the company was valued around $100 million.

Did you ever see a point that you would be co-founder and co-CEO of a company that was worth $100 million? Guys, if you've been watching the Ultimate Human Podcast for any length of time, you know that one thing I do not do is push products. I do not just let any advertiser into this space because I believe that the products that appear on the Ultimate Human Podcast should be things that I use every day in my life to improve my own physiology. One of them is something called the Echo Go Plus. The Echo Go Plus is a hydrogen water generator that you can take on the go. You essentially take the top off of this bottle, you pour bottled water in this, and repeatedly it will make high part per million hydrogen water. You press this little button, you'll see these bubbles going up in the water. That's hydrogen being created in the water. There are all kinds of peer-reviewed published clinical studies on

the benefits of hydrogen water, including reduced inflammation, better absorption of your supplements, better absorption of your foods, better balance of the stomach acid, and it feeds an entire class of bacteria in your gut. Hydrogen water, in my opinion, is the most beneficial water that you can drink, and now you can take it wherever you go. You can go to echo, E-C-H-O, H2O.com. That's echo, E-C-H-O, H2O.com. Enter the code ULTIMATE10 for a discount. Echo H2O, enter the code ULTIMATE10 for a discount. You didn't see this in your ayahuasca journey, did you?

No, no, I think, no, no. I still walk out on our warehouse and headquarters and the teams. You're just like, wow. Still every week. God's good. Yeah, I just walk out and I just, like we just had our, you know,

we do our monthly all hands meetings, looking out like, wow, this group of people has come together to go like work on this project like we're all solving like i get excited yeah as a company it's awesome i've always had a dream of just building an awesome culture and people working on something together and like that was like a personal dream that i had where i could show up to work we all enjoyed being around each other we worked hard. We worked towards this mission.

But then I look at just like for the health, health and wellness, preventative health, like all these things of like, man, this is the most group of humans that arguably probably have ever come together to work on this modality of cold plunging. Yeah. Like that blows me away. For sure. In what I know in the known history. How many employees do you have now?

We are probably around 240 employees. Wow. You know, a whole different spectrum. We've brought a lot of people over from big legacy industries. You have to. Yeah. But that's exciting. They're coming over and being like, all right, I know it's changed their life.

And they're like, I know what this is doing. And mission leads the way. It's a sort of a labor of love for the whole company, which is incredible. When you're in service to humanity and you're driven by, we see the same thing in our industry. It's like the chicken soup for the soul

is not the balance sheet. It's the stream of life-changing texts and emails and testimonials that you get from people going, you know, and I'm sure you get some really good ones, man. This pulled me out of depression, man. This kickstarted my weight loss journey, man. This, you know, fixed my mood issues. You know, I'm sleeping better. You know, and when you start to have a positive impact on that sphere in somebody's life, what you realize is, you know, the little contribution that you're making has so many touch points in their life. You know, you're affecting their career, their relationships, their maybe better father, maybe better mother, you mother you know more more self-esteem you know better self-image improved sleep like it's just there's so many touch points that this company that you sort of you know molded and and

started yourself is having on on humanity and like that's got to drive you. I mean, I've gotten to know you're a very purpose-driven guy. It is. Yeah, and sometimes it is. I'm looking at spreadsheets. Yeah. And it's a business that I'm running. You're an entrepreneur. And it's like you step back and you're just like,

what are we doing here? Like the impact we're getting to have is just, it's incredible. Talk a little bit about how you how, how do you maintain the culture in a company growing that fast? And how do you just not become product and service oriented and have a client vendor relationship with your clients? I mean, how are you building this culture? When you said, you know, you didn't really want to build a company, you wanted to build a culture, how do you and your partner maintain that in the company

and still manage the growth? Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this podcast that also want, you know, culture-driven enterprise and you want to enjoy the journey, right? How do you guys maintain that culture? Yeah, sometimes it's harder than others. Very intentional.

First and foremost, I'm like, I don't want to... We spend more time at work in this place than we do half the time with our families. This better be a place. I do like how you added interviews in the sauna and the cold plunge i thought that was really cool that that not a qualifier you human resources directors but i just think it's super cool so that was a bit you talk about culture like it was a huge hire for us we brought you know leslie sullivan over history and

hr and building culture and that was a huge hire for us to come in and be like, you know, that was something that was so passionate for me. And I wanted someone as, you know, as a CEO, there's so much you take on, but culture was critical. So I was like, I need someone that has my back, that is like solely focused on creating the ultimate place for us to be and work and create that culture. So, you know, step one, like that was part of it, like building, making the right hire for that. And then it's, you know, we did, it's, I know a lot of companies do it, but for like our mission and values, like that was something we had it kind of on the surface. Mike and I, we wrote out our values. It was pretty generic

authenticity and, you know, these words like, what does that mean? And I remember we hired someone to come in, this was back in a couple of years ago. And he was basically, we call him like our business shaman. And he came in and he basically called our, he was like, this is bullshit. Like, what are your, like, we need, we spent six months then as a, as a core leadership team, we were very tight leadership team at the time. What are our values? Who are we? Like deeply, like dissecting every word, putting them out there. And so that has become, you know, when you interview, you learn about what the values are. When you onboard, you learn about the values are. All of our reviews are only based around our five values, where you show up. Plus, minus, plus, minus. How do you get,

you know, we have core rules that you can't have too much in leadership to be in the plus, minus zone. So that's... And how do you measure those? Is this a test that they do? You assume one of the personality profilers? No, so it's like we're just very clear into what these values mean.

And so then, you know, every quarter you're being, where are you sitting in this value? Uh, one of our values is called courageously direct. It's say what needs to be said, uh, be straight up, no gossip. Courageously direct. Courageously direct, no gossip, say what needs to be said. Um, you know, and that's a lot easier said than done sometimes.

Like that's an edge for me sometimes to like really like. Chart in relationships, much less companies. Totally. And totally and so we what is where do we stand there are we saying what needs are we letting resentment show up are we letting are we not uh being honest with each other or i always say the other side of that is like sometimes it's leaving what doesn't need to be said like are we showing restraint and like that didn't need to, like, was that actually the courageously direct thing maybe was to hold back? Right. Anyway, so that all of those values have been critical in us, like really defining our culture. And then you build the guardrails around that. Like we said, we have all these review structures, we have different meeting points, we, you know, create very common goals that the team like experiential goals financial goals

and you know as i say all this i'm still this is something i study i really look into like how do we because we triple in size last year and that's massive so that goes from you know and i think we did really really well and we learned some things of like what we didn't foresee. Right. Really try and take, you know, employee feedback really directly. How are you managing that kind of pace of hiring when the company triples in a year? So that last year was like the accelerant. We've slowed down on hiring now. It's fast and furious.

You just do what you got to do, you know? Like whether it's, yeah, it's, it's being clear into the roles that we want to go after, you know, and we're really big into like hiring, you know, any department head, it's like, we treat them as an entrepreneur. Like you run your business and we are clear, but like you own it and you know, they have their process and their style, but we really give, you know, space for them to go do it their way. Create. Create, exactly.

And so I find that to be much higher upside. Better ownership, structure, accountability can be more clear. But yeah, it's fast and furious. Yeah, it's funny. Some of the things you're saying, I'm applying applying these to my own business and in the back of my mind, you know, because those are just, you know, basic core values that I think get lost a lot of times in business. You know, I was just in Dubai. And before I went over there, I was Googling around to see what had places had a cold plunge. And there was an entrepreneur that was staying at the Mandarin Oriental in Dubai.

And he liked cold plunging so much, he bought them two cold plunges and put it in. So I looked at the gym. So it was there for him whenever he showed up? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was just a, so I was like, all right, we're going to that hotel. So, I mean, I just think that there's so much promise. And truth be told,

we just cut the podcast and took a little wee-wee break. But you told me, I don't even know why this deserves to be on my podcast right now, but it actually hit me in the funny spots. It's probably why you took a break to go pee. Well, you may be conscious of it, but he told me a story about how he was on a podcast and the podcast guest

had to pee so bad but didn't want to bring it up. It was the host. It was the host? It was the host. So shout out, it's already public. It is public?

Okay, because I don't want to blow somebody up. He's a legend and he's incredible. He's an incredible podcast, Danny Miranda. Okay. He flew to Plunge

to interview me and we did an interview and in the end, he had peed his pants. He flew to Plunge to interview me, and we did an interview. And in the end, he had peed his pants. And that was how... It wasn't like he peed his pants because he wasn't in control. He peed his pants because... He consciously peed his pants. Because he was such a committed podcast host.

Like, he was like, I was not going to interrupt your story. It was too, like, it was too intensive for the moment that I could not have said we need to break. So he's like, I just. Dude, I just cannot imagine. First of all, these are white chairs, but. Yeah, this would be terrible. I only have two of them.

So, I mean, what kind of chairs did he have? I'm really interested in this. I don't remember. Hopefully they were vinyl. Yeah, everything got cleaned up. Everything got cleaned up. Everything got cleaned up. So he just let it rip. You didn't know?

You didn't? Not in there in the moment. Not in the moment. He was a total professional. He committed to the game, did it. I have a feeling this may not have been his first time peeing on a podcast. That's a question. And he handled it every way.

He just made it public. He had no shame. He just ate it. He owned it. He was just like, I was just made it public. He like didn't, he had no shame. He just ate it. He owned it. He was just like, I did this because I wasn't going to interrupt your, your interview. I, it was what it was. That's the biggest compliment. I'm trying to think of the caliber of guests that I would piss my way through a podcast for.

Hmm. Nope. Can't think anyway. Yeah. I, I, I felt, i felt honored i guess but yeah but but but but now this is where the story takes an intriguing turn right this you're only hearing 50 of the story because later um he was on a podcast and and and you had the same moment of release. This was not on my bingo card of what I would be sharing on the Ultimate Human podcast. How many plunge refunds are coming in right now?

I was being interviewed. It was digital. But it was halfway through. There's no way out. I had to go. I didn't schedule a bathroom break before the interview. You know you can ask to cut. totally here's where it was i don't think this happens if if the previous one hadn't happened because it went into my head of like that's an option which is an absurd option

to think that you are but i was now like oh you can do this. No one's here. The ultimate efficiency. So I just let it rip, continued on with the interview. Wow. And I forget which interview it was. I don't remember what show. I am definitely going to go back and find it. But you can probably find this, and I'm sure there's some adjustment in my facial reactions.

A little closing your eyes. During the interview, maybe a little more relaxed on the second half, or maybe not. Like I'm now, you know, maybe a little more relaxed on the second half or maybe not. Like I'm now, you know, I just peed my pants. Yeah. So that is how I brought it up. And I think it got you nervous. No, it did.

It made me nervous because now I was conscious of it the whole podcast. So we just had to cut. For the record, I used the rusher, not the chair. But that was hilarious. And I'm glad we weaved it into the podcast. Maybe we'll carve it out. I don't know. But I thought that was a very authentic moment. Because sometimes I want to pee when I'm in the cold plunge, but I always hold it.

That would hurt. That would be a struggle. No, I mean, I feel the urge to be, but I always just wait until I get out because my cold plunge is actually in my bathroom, so I don't think I would ever forgive myself. I was like, toilet's eight feet away, dude. Why did you do this to yourself? And then I would think about it.

You can hang on another three minutes. You can hang on to the three minutes. So anyway, we digress. But the plunge is certainly the market leader in innovation and cold plunging. If you're comfortable, tell me about where you think you as a cold plunger going. What sort of innovations are you looking at to stay a market leader? Are you looking at different filtration systems and trying to get chemicals out of the water?

Are you looking at different modalities for filtration, maybe putting bio-stacking modalities into the cold plunge? What's on the horizon for you guys? Well, the new one that's even out of cold was we added the sauna. That was like a big one, a lot of customer interest on that. What's your timeframe on saunas? Do you have these in stock? They're about six-week lead time, or no, four-week lead time right now. We've manufactured them out of Sacramento, clear cedar, the whole

thing. They're really beautiful saunas. Everything's US. Yeah. We use the HUM heaters. They're out of Estonia. And that's what we use in the unit itself, but it's all designed. We're really proud and excited on that unit. It was like a fun design process. Don't come from a sauna backer. Kind of a natural evolution for cold plunging too. It was. It wasn't our intention when we got into it.

We weren't like, oh, we'll get cold, then we'll go hot. But it was a customer. It was like all of our customers were asking, who do you recommend or will you ever build one? And so we pulled them and got some info, and it was like was like let's do it so we set out on another two-year journey and we launched it this year right um so that's been and what do you have one person two person we have our like our xl which can really fit like up to six but i would say like four comfortably okay then the standard is more of like a you know three person sauna okay um and

then we'll have a smaller one coming out later. Um, a little smaller footprint, but it's a very unique one. We did it like, you know, core features to it. Like I always thought saunas were pretty uncomfortable. Like they're kind of, you're like either straight back or they can be barrels. We made like this ergonomic centric sauna. So it's like at a 15 angle degree. So you can kind of relax and recline into it, which was a, you know, that was where my brain was like why don't we do this we did it with some designers that were what we called sauna nerds these great guys out of wisconsin and they they it was fun process because mike and i were coming up with well why don't we do we want

ergonomic and they're like well there's an engineering dynamic to this that's reason why saunas have not been ergonomically friendly it's very hard to put this together and have it stand and so it doesn't fall down so there was like a lot of hurdles we had to come to even create the design that we had um we wanted a sauna that was multi-use that you could work out in you know like can you wow we made it big enough that we could uh put an assault bike in there and you could do an assault bike workout and fold the benches up and you could actually work out at like 110 degree heat and kind of build your heat endurance, you know, which has a huge plethora of like, you know, your performance abilities and athletics. We had that, we had, you know, we wanted a sauna at the time. There wasn't a real sauna. You could

just remotely control. And we wanted to be able to schedule and, know i want a sauna at 7 a.m and uh my partner she wants to uh sauna at 4 p.m can the sauna just turn on at that can i turn it on remotely um so those are all features that we worked in now we have the plumber so wow that's uh that's a big one i think um modalities i mean it's just like, we're big into just iterate. Like we just get feedback. And it's like, how do we just, on the pursuit of like creating the best cold punch,

what does the world want? Like trying to just commit to that process. What about like filtration? I mean, are there any things on the horizon for it? Because I think that's the area where, first of all, you know, again, it sounds like I'm trying to run a commercial for you guys I'm really not

I've experienced with a lot of different cold punches but the filtration in this thing is amazing you know I'm able to just reach in and grab the hair off the tops of the little filters I haven't changed the filter since I've had it I've changed the water once since I've had it and I use it very regularly my wife loves that you can

actually shut the motor off when you get in there because she doesn't like the extra circulation. She just likes to freeze and deal with it and get out. I actually kind of like that it doesn't let you cheat. You got the flow hitting you. Yeah, the flow is kind of hitting you. But is there anything interesting on the horizon for...

I mean, we just launched all the new stuff in like like in the sense of the filter location that was like an actual with the integration yeah the like how accessible it is it was like a huge feedback piece we got our old units were very difficult to actually change the filter current filter is about 20 bigger so you actually have to you know in in in theory, it's less, you know, less water changing. We made the, the big issue in filtration

is a lot of hair, you know, hair and lint from your clothing can really upset the pump. And when the pump gets upset, the flow rate gets upset. That's where the downstream issues come

into your water cleanliness and everything. So we made the hair, like the, the grates on the unit very tight. So you could actually, hair and lint doesn't get through there.

So those were like, you know, I don't know if they're the sexiest thing to the consumer. Right. But from a efficiency of your unit, they're massive factors. Like you said, you know, I don't change my water. I don't put chemicals in my water. I don't either. And again, I'm not, we sell a mate, we have a non-bromine, non-chlorine option

that you can put in your water if you want to. Every, you know, different water sources are different ways to do it if you, you're filtering the water in or not.

So, I recommend like, every water source is different. But yeah, we made it that this thing is, it's, it's very low touch. Yeah. um and it's it's simple and it cold plunging is already hard enough yeah we wanted to just take the whole every excuse in

the book out of it and this thing is uh simple easy setup and and the water stays clean and cold whatever you want yeah that's so amazing ryan this has been amazing. I've thoroughly enjoyed my journey with you, with the plunge. I really feel like you guys are just getting started. It's fascinating, the culture that you've built, the way that you've maintained humility and gratitude through this whole process, how it was really born out of a real personal journey for you and your partner. I mean, those are just amazing just amazing. Cause I think the people make the company, the people make the culture. You know, I wind down every podcast by, by asking my guests the same question. If you see my podcast, you know, it's coming. There's no right or wrong answer for this, but I always ask what, what it means to you to be an ultimate human, you use the term gratitude to me is, uh, grateful for what we have and committed to, you know, self, self-transformation. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's the counterbalance of like, you know, being fully in gratitude of I'm good with where I'm at and the purpose and the motivation to strive for more. Yeah. You know, uh, I know that you believe that because this morning we did, we did breath work out on the balcony. We talked about this a little bit.

And, you know, I was saying that I use some of my morning sessions in light prayer just to give thanks, not to ask for what I want, just to be thankful for where I am. And I got that very much that same vibe, you know, from you, just a interest in in what you do and a genuine passion for what you do and a real humility in like this success that you've that you've had so we have a we have a phrase i just it's so important to me it's like one of our core values all boats rise it's like and that's like core to me and it's just this like true win-win relationships like i think you talk about gratitude and competitive landscape and what it is it's just this like true win-win relationships like i think you talk about gratitude and competitive landscape and what it is it's like and i think you live this really admirably is like thank you you know it's like yeah you want to succeed but you also want the health of others

to improve that's really the mission here and you know it's it's like it's the core value that i try and like live all my life like any relationship that i enter into like that it's the core value that I try and live all my life. Any relationship that I enter into, that it's a win-win. This isn't like a reductionist, one's going to outdo the other. And then how big can that boat get? How many people get on that rising tide situation? Yeah. And so that's what I mean when I say gratitude for what is,

and equally the improvement. And that's like rising the tide. Amen. That's awesome. Well, guys, how can they find you? How can they find out more about The Plunge? How do they find out about The Plunge? How do they follow you?

Where can they find you? Plunge.com. That's the simplest way for all of our social medias. Type in Plunge or even if you might have to type cold plunge you'll find us but plunge um plunge.com amazing man thank you for coming on today and as always guys that's just science