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

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 punch.

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 totally.

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 have not had a migraine headach. 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 Breca, 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's, I'm. I'm happy to. To. To call a friend. He spent the night at my house last night and we actually did a whole morning full of biohacking and breath work 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 coal 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.

Correct.

Of. Of. 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 I use it every day. We used it today. Not together, but I, I want to, I want to back this story up because I feel like you guys started at around a time when cold plunging wasn't as in vogue as it is today and maybe even not even as widely as accepted or as mainstream practice as it is today. So talk a little bit about your journey from what you were doing before to this segue into the cold plunging industry.

Yeah, 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 September of 2020. My co founder Mike and I, we both owned brick and mortar basically float tank centers.

Floats, the sensory deprivation.

Deprivation. We had saunas and he had cryo at his. So we, we had kind of. We were in health and wellness biohacking.

Were you guys part of the same franchise?

No.

So 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 is back in 2016. There's no, you know, float tank center was a very rare thing. And I was. Or he the 2015 he 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.

You know, so he had same, you know, 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 just Disciplinary association for Psychedelic Studies, which had been like a big impact in our life. So we got to like do some, 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 their closed down and he had 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 in my 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. And 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, couple months, boom. I. I wasn't getting sick anymore. So I was like, okay, I am fully. I learned about whim Wim Hof. And I was totally, like, fan. 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. And then Mike, similar to him, he was. He'd got attracted to it through similar thing, kind of chasing rivers. He had gone on this road trip through the Rockies, and. 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 it was like, I. 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 know, 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 have these moments. Like, is. Is it us? Should we do this? And is this actually opportunity?

Actually staring. 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, 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 is the summer of 2020. And I was finally like, all right, let's do it, man. And so it was literally like we, we turned a website on. You know, we bought TheColdPlunge.com for $10. This is, it was a unique time.

Where you@the coldplunch.com for 10 bucks.

10 bucks. It was like 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 bath. I take ice baths. In our group it was all cold plunge. Like we're like this. So we just went all in. We, the company was called plunge. We bought the coal plunge.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 this the concept of cold plunging get away from just the post athlete ice bath where you're suffering through it? We wanted to kind of. 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, here we are now four years later.

So you, you, you said something earlier that caught my attention. You said that you guys had similar paths beforehan life journeys 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 then, 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, that set. And, and I've had just some fascinating entrepreneurs on the podcast, some of them making groundbreaking technologies in, in the health and wellness space. I mean I just had the founder of Whoop on no medical experience, but here he is, you know, creating a device that is, that is very likely going to have save a lot of lives down the road as they, as they innovated into even more of a medical device than just a, just a wearable. So talk about that, that, that journey.

Yeah, I mean for me it started where I had a serious accident in Thailand probably about 12 years ago. Head on collision, very, you know, speedboat it 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, a brain, but really my jaw was separated into two and they had to do like a pretty emerg 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, 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 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, you know, 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 transformant. 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 going to go in a year. I 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, and to get my physical body ready. So that's what led me to the float tank. And so it was very serendipitous. Ended up going the next year down to Peru. Had, you know, a life altering experience of just, 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.

Right.

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. Like 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 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, are you seeing your, 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, what 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. Their journeys with ayahuasca. But what was that experience like? Was it frightening or.

Yeah, it's. It's. It's. It's everything. It's terrifying. It's the most peak experience and everything in between. It's a tool that I. 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 this, 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 it's. It's. I actually just go through this process when I. Whenever I enter into ayahuasca. And it's like, you go in and it's just, you know, what opens up is. It's the ultimate roll of the dice. You don't know what's coming. Like, you know, 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 rain, basically, it's like, recognized. 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'm a. I 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, N. I actually don't even know what N stands for. I literally, when I work with it, it's like, I end it. I. But it's this amazing tool for me, and it's different for everyone. So I don't. This isn't like, 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. It'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. 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. 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, 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. Have given and offered me and. And. 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 just. I've never questioned love. And it allows to go, you know, chase these big dreams and try and spread it more and give these things into modalities that matter to me.

So are your parents a big supportive force in your life?

They're huge. They've always been. They don't always get me. Like, I've definitely gone kind of an opposite route of them, but they. They've always respected and trusted me.

They gotta think that you built something really special. I mean, they've gotta 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, which is great. They go floating, which is like, if you know my parents, that's not what, you know, right in there. Like, they're a little more pragmatic, 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 Deweys.

Yeah.

So. So you guys decide in. In this during the COVID pandemic. You know, like you said, you're. You weren't sitting on, like, a, you know, war chest of cash. So, you know, how do you. How do you creep into this. This cold punch space? You get the. You get the URL. Yep. And you decide that, you know, you're gonna. You're gonna compete either on price point or on utility, what have you. But I mean, how did you even go about deciding where we're gonna get this manufacturer? Like, who. Who can build a cold punch? You pick up the phone and start calling manufacturers, hey, can you build a.

So 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.

I literally remember that when you guys launched it, literally, I was like that 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. And so that is funny. The largest freeze standing 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 one 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% like what we. 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. We just. Yeah, we kind of put. We put one together that made sense. Start call 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 trapped bootstrap. 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 kind of cash flow the business through our lead time. Now it's since grown much, much larger. But, you know, we. 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? And so that was the. That was the win. And then you. Then we get into this. We play. We went really deep into like our influencer partnerships. So we were early on with like, you know, we're DM Aubrey Marcus and he's like, why don't you fly out and like set one up? And that was like our first. It was our first unit we ever shipped was to Aubrey's house.

That's expensive. When you're, you know, starting out as an entrepreneur, like to give product away, to give your time away, to to actually go and do an. I mean you have to do it to kind of get exposure.

It was the founder 100. It was we rent. 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 it, 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, 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 Hubermans, they were at Tony Hawk's house. And it's like 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.

And at this time you weren't manufacturing your old coal budget. You're still buying.

No. So we were, 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 cold 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 thousand tens of thousands of people on like what they want Nicole plunge what they don't want, what's working, what's not working, what is important. 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 like you don't second bigger tub. So we had two chillers. But it was very. This was it, 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 like a cold plunge for any use case, any, you know, budgetary reasons to space to location.

So and I gotta say too man, whoever does your product animation now is spot on, man. It is, it is just like I, I use the term sexy. It's just super sexy. It's just very crisp and modern, minimalist and it, it gives you a good fundamental understanding of the product. So whoever is taking your ideas and, and bringing them to life in the electronic domain is doing, doing a great job. I, I love that conveyor belt look to how you guys assemble the.

Yeah.

You know, the cold plunge. I mean I was very attracted to it. Does that happen?

Ben and the marketing team will pass that on.

All right, right, right off camera, dude. Big shout out. Because I, I think you know, when, when you have a consumer product, I mean they don't get a chance to touch if you don't have a retail location where they 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.

Correct.

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 got to be some, some points along, you know, the way where you were like, man, I don't, I don't know if, if we're going to make it or you know, we've got to take this big gamble on the, 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. Yeah. Only you guys do.

Yeah.

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, and slapping them together, how did, how did you roll it into, to bringing manufacturing in house?

And yeah, I think so. Mike was doing, Mike was the team early on and he was designing and even 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 on the design front and 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? And. 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?

Yeah.

And he 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, 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 you know, Mike and I don't have that background. Like we ran float centers.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

That's why I'm so fascinated by this journey.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean it was 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 what 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, you know, 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 were already doing oh my God, there's someone actually building one like for like for at that time $5,000 was. They didn't really exist. And so they, you know that kind of accelerate. Now we're getting to. It's just a. It's still. But it's still. It's still so early 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.

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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 like this. And that's what. And then it, you actually hear the stories of like, oh, now we have Sunday hangouts that used to be, you know, beers and darts.

It's.

We cold plunge in and connect. You know, it's a different form of connection. It's just, that's the stuff that I, I still go out and 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 you're digesting is all about your industry, you think that it's a lot more mainstream than it is and you get, you know, 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, like you know, we, we, we talk about biohacking, longevity, anti aging. Most people don't, don't even know what those terms are. You know, I mean outside of our sphere, I find, you know, I try to make a conscious effort to not be the ultra, 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 totally, I think, I totally agree with you. I think we, if 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, right. Well, it makes me more focused. It makes me a, you know, a better business partner. It makes me a happier person. I feel more happy about my, like, things that are really tangible.

Right.

Like that's the, you know, that's what I get. So I mean, of course I, 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, I do.

Yeah, let's actually talk about that for a minute. I mean, there's. 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, 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, now you can. But you know, the, the whole idea that you go from these subjective things like I, I'm feeling better to now you see that there's real science, you know, behind, behind cold plunging. I, I've often argued that, you know, cold plunging is a, is an amazing way to kick off your weight loss journey. And I don't think that there's any, 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, 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, that's a good thing for metabolism, good thing for, for weight loss. If. Now, I was reading a really interesting article about some of the specific cold shock proteins, specifically LIN28a and LIN28b. And these particular cold shock proteins the liver releases are, 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's out of control, their insulin's 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 it 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 like, who's your, what's your fastest growing market segment right now? Is it gyms?

Is it the, the gyms? I'm super excited on kind of this B2B side of like that's, 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, like the core customer. It's like we run a lot of, you know, pre purchase surveys and engage our, you know, potential customers. And it's still workout recovery is still this, like, like what intrigues a lot of people. Absolutely. It's like that's a, 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. I, I think it is a. I get cold. Right. And get cold. 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 as a sleep hack last night.

We got in, it was like a 60 second that we didn't go super long.

Right.

Weren't like pushing redlining in the cold.

We did steam before.

Yep.

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 I, 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 elite 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, I'm more of, I am trying to live a, a robust, happy lifestyle, work out hard, but I also am not training to be an elite athlete. And so to me it's, I find it to be more personally more of an excuse of getting cold than actually doing it. If it's that big of a concern, do it before. But I tend to be like where I can get cold because I know what I feel afterward.

Right.

And how my life is accelerant from there. It's not about just getting cold. It's like the momentum that's gets created then, you know, I, I just get in where I can get in.

I still literally feel the, the plunge. We did, you know, this morning we totally repeated the same metric. You know, you and I and, and will, you had 15, 20 minutes steam and then three, four minute cold plunge. 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 was seeing you like went in before and then you came out like.

And then I jumped on him because he was warm. I was like, come here. And I did feel these cold hands. But so I, I, you know, I, I agree with you. The market is just, you know, they're just exploding. But when you start, you're also getting data. Yeah, 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, you know, 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, how is the data and the feedback kind of shaping the direction of your business?

Yeah, it's all, I mean, like I said, all starts with workout recovery and it all goes to mood and energy. It becomes, it's a mental health tool is number one first and foremost what I think this is like every person is seen. So that's what we like from a focus standpoint. That's what we really focus around.

And, and, and that's also the, in the data that you're seeing, like people are reporting, man, I just feel a lot better.

Yeah.

Mentally, it's emotionally, totally.

It's, you know, and it shows up into different statements of, 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. One was someone, it was at least 10 years, had had a migraine headache for 25 out of the. At the minimum, 25 of 30 days per month. Really had done every option. You can think 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. They were like, this is. I've. 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, this is. I'll let other people debate what. 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, like, if you have an autoimmune, like the 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 a 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 6 60, start at 65, just like ease in. Like, I think of it like, you know, working out for your muscles. Like, if you haven't been working out in the gym, your nervous system's the same thing. It needs to develop. And so, you know, you wouldn't go to, 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 plunge 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. Exactly. That you can, you can learn how to relax into it. And so, you know, I think, I think that's a big misnomer in cold plunging, that this is like a suffering exercise. And it, 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 I was, if anyone was take away, like, how to like starting out with cold plunging, everyone asks, like, how do you do it, what you do? It's like, find a temp that takes your breath away. But you can, you can find a way to regulate your breath in there and just follow that lead. You'll naturally lower the temp. You'll find the temp that works for you. Don't go stress yourself out to a spot that you, you were just redlining the whole time. It's not, it's not, it's not what this exercise is.

You know, I, I think too that the, the starting point for when you look at the evidence, at least that I've looked at is there's not a lot of evidence that much colder is better or much longer is better. It's really just, you know, one of those tools in the arsenal of optimal health and really mental health 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, 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 can 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, what's. And this is again a general statement, but women about 7 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.

Exactly. So it's, 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 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, it's not one that you can really surrender into. You can't actually. It's tough to really relax into a shower. Yeah, it's just hitting you. It's. It's not concentrated over your body.

Right.

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 and 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. 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, 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. 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. You know, even though you do see.

Evidence for prolonged exposure.

I. It's more of conversations with experts in places that have brought that up. 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.

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 leaves there 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. I don't necessarily. I kind of. I want. I'm curious. I want to try it. But then floating became what a hugely studied area. And what it was doing for the mental side of it was great. It was quantifying, you know, what everyone was feeling. That's great.

Right?

Cold is getting there now. It's like the ver. Look, everyone that gets a cult 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 stuff like that. But like, I know it works. And now it's the exciting part of like, okay, let's go, like actually start to quantify why this worked for you in this way. Why this worked for you in that way.

Right.

And you know, I get real excited over the next, like, you know, 24 months here, what we're going to see. Yeah, discovery.

Yeah. I was actually just on a previous podcast talking about, you know, if, 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've got artificial intelligence that can, that can crunch 700 trillion independent data points 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, in, in this app. And, 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, it's a relatively easy thing to do. So what do you see as the next evolution of, of cold plunge? Where, where are you guys going? I know we just, we, we just put a, 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 punching for 99 bucks. That's a whole lot different than getting in for ten 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, 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 much sooner than later.

Right.

And create 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 connectedable 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, smart plunge? Like, you know, you have your whoop. There's a. Now as we understand this more your HRV is changing every day. What is HRV like? Okay, that's. There's a lot that's wrapped up in like a recovery score there. And so, you know, should you be plunging on the days that you have a really low recovery score? Maybe, but 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, your Gary, your sleep score was incredible. You are ready to rip Today. We actually brought the temp down 2 degrees for you and we recommend that you go a minute further today and you're ready and you, 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, that's kind of the big roadmap.

Yeah.

Where I see this, the convergence of.

Technology and the modality itself.

Correct.

Yeah, correct. Yeah. That's that's that super exciting. And I, I have a tendency to, to, to believe the same thing. And you know, the, the product suite that you have now, that's, that's getting the price point down to the, to the masses, I think is going to just open up a whole, a whole new market for you. You know, I read something and you don't have to validate this if you don't want to, but I read something recently 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?

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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 I it 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 meeting. I was looking out like, wow, like this, you, 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, I'm 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. And in what I know in the.

Known history, like how many employees do you have now?

We, 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. To.

Yeah, they're coming. But that's exciting. They're coming over and being like, all right, I'm. I know it's changed their life. And they're like, I want to. I know what this is doing. And you know, mission, mission leads the way. Like we, you know, it's a sort.

Of a labor of love for the whole company. Which is, which is incredible. You know, when you're in service to humanity and like 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, 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 kick started my weight loss journey. Man, this, you know, fixed my mood issues. You know, I'm sleeping better, I'm, you know, and, 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 know, more, more self esteem, you know, better self image, improve 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 because you're, you're very, I mean, I've gotten to know you're very purpose driven. Purpose driven guy.

It, it is the. Yeah. And sometimes it is. I'm looking at spreadsheets.

Yeah.

And it's a business and I'm running, you know, and it's like you step back, he's like, what are we doing here? Like what, like what the impact we're getting to have is just, it's, it's incredible.

Talk a little bit about how you, how, how do you maintain the culture in a, 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, when you said, you know, you, you didn't really want to build a company, wanted to build a culture, how do you and your partner maintain that in, in the company and still manage the growth? Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this podcast that, that also want, you know, culture driven enterprise and they want to enjoy the journey. Right. How do you guys maintain that culture?

Yeah, it's, it's sometimes harder than others. Very intentional. Like, I, first and foremost, I'm like, I don't want to. We spend more time at work in this place than we do half time with our families. Like, 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 qualifier you human resources directors, but I just think it's goal.

So that was a big. 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, 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 is back in a couple 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 like, what are your. Like we need. We spent six months then as a, as a core leadership team. We're a 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 built 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 it.

And how do you measure this? Is this a test that they do using one of the personality profilers?

No. So it's like we. We're just very clear into what these values mean. And. And so then, you know, every quarter you're being. Where are you sitting in this value? One of our values is called courageously direct. It's say what needs to be said. Be straight up, no gossip.

Courageously direct.

Courageously direct, no gossip. Say what needs to be said. You know, and that's a lot easier said than done. Sometimes that's an edge for me sometimes.

To like, really like, chart in relationships, much less companies.

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 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, you know, 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, really try and take, you know, employee feedback really directly.

How are you managing that kind of the 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. 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.

Exactly. And so, you know, I find that to be much higher upside, better ownership structure, accountability can be. Can be more clear. But yeah, it's fast and furious.

Yeah, it's funny, like some of the things you're saying, I'm like 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. In business. You know, I was just in Dubai and before I went over there, I was googling around to see what had a. Places had a cold plunge. And there was an entrepreneur that was staying at the Manor Oriental in. In Dubai, and he liked cold plunging so much, he bought them two cold plunges and put it in.

So I looked there for him whenever he showed up. Yeah, Yeah.

I mean, it was just a. So I was like, all right, we're going. We're going to that hotel. So I mean, I just think that there's, There's. 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 because.

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. This is already public. So it is public.

Okay.

Yeah. He's a legend and he's incredible. He's incredible. Podcast Danny Miranda.

Okay.

He flew to Plunge to interview me and we did an interview and it. In the end, he had. He had peed his pants. And. And that was how. It wasn't like he beat his pants because he wasn't in control.

He peed his pants because consciously Peter 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 cheers 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. So he just let it rip. You didn't know? You didn't.

Not in there. In the moment. He was a total professional. Like, he just committed to the game, like, did it.

I feeling this may not have been his first time peeing on a podcast. That's a question.

It's. And he handled it every way that he, like, he 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, I wasn't going to interrupt your, your interview. I. It was what it was.

That's a, 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. H. No, 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 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, so but it was, you know, 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, 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, I just let it rip. Continued on with the interview and. Wow. I forget which interview it was. I don't remember what show.

I am definitely gonna probably find this.

And I'm sure there's some adjustment in my facial reactions during the interview. Maybe a little more relaxed on the second half or maybe not. Like, I'm now, you know, I just peed my pants. But yeah, so that, that is. So now I brought it up, and I think it got you nervous.

Yeah, no, it did. It made me nervous because now I was Conscious of it, the whole podcast. So we just had to cut. I, for the record, I used the restroom. Not the, not the chair. But that, that was hilarious. And I'm glad we've weaved it into the podcast. Maybe we'll carve it out. I don't know. But I, I thought that was, 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. I don't, that would be a struggle.

I, I. No, I mean, I feel the urge. I feel the urge to be. But I always just wait till 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.

Yeah, you can hang on to the three minutes. So anyway, we digress. But you know, the plunge is, is, is certainly the market leader in, in innovation and cold plunging. You know, if, if you're comfortable, tell me about where you think, you know, you as a coal plunger going. What, what sort of innovations are you looking at to stay, you know, stay a market leader? Are you looking at different filtration systems, trying to get chemicals out of the water? You are, are you looking at different modalities for, you know, filtration? Maybe putting bio stacking modalities into the cold plunge? What's, 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. We had.

What's your time frame on saunas? Do you have these in stock?

They're, they're about six weekly 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.

Everything's usually.

Yeah, the whole. We use the whom heaters. They're out of Estonia. Okay. And that's what we use in our, in the, in the unit itself. But it's all, all designed. We're really proud and excited on that unit. It was like a fun design process. Don't come from a kind of a.

Natural evolution for cold plunging.

It was because yeah, it wasn't our intention. When we got into it, we weren't like, oh, we'll get cold and we'll go hot. But it was a customer. It was like we, all of our customers are asking, who do you Recommend or will you ever build one? And so we pulled them and got some info and it was like, let's do it. So we set out on another two year journey and we launched it this year.

Right.

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. And then we'll have a smaller one coming out later, a little smaller footprint, but it's 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 right. 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. We wanted a sauna that was multi use that you could work out in, you know, like, can you. We made it big enough that we could put an assault bike in there and you could do an assault bike workout and fold the benches up and you can 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 was no real sauna. You could just remotely control. And we wanted to be able to schedule and you know, I want a sauna at 7am and my partner, she wants to sauna at 4pm can the sauna just turn on at that? Can I turn it on remotely? So those are all features that we worked in. Now we have the Plunge Song. So. Wow, that's, that's a big one. I think modalities. I Mean, it's just like how 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. The best cold plunge. What does the world want? Like trying to just commit to that.

What about like filtration? I mean, there are any things on the high horizon for. Because I think that's the area where for. 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 texture circulation. She just likes to freeze and then deal with it and get out. I actually kind of like that. It doesn't let you cheat. You know, flow's kind of hitting you. But is there anything interesting on the horizon for.

I mean we just launched all the new stuff and like, like in the sense of the filter location, that was like an actual.

Well, the integration.

Yeah, the like how accessible it is. I was like a huge feedback piece. We got. Our old units were very difficult to actually change the filter. Current filters about 20% bigger. So you actually have to, you know, in theory it was 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 right into your water cleanliness and everything. So we made the hair gra. Like the, the grates on the unit very tight so you could actually. Hair 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, I don't change my water. I don't. I don't put chemicals in my water. How do I know? And again, I'm not. We sell a. 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.

And it's simple and it's 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 simple, easy setup, and the water stays clean and cold whenever you want. Yeah.

It'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 because I think the people make the company, the people make the culture. I wind down every podcast 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 it means to you to be an ultimate human.

I think the ultimate human, you use the term gratitude to me, is 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, 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 used. 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, same vibe, you know, from you. Just a genuine interest in what you do and a genuine passion for what you do and a real humility in, like, this success that you've had. So we have a phrase.

I just. It's so important to me. It's like one of our core values is 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 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 of my life. Like any relationship that I enter into, like, that, it's a win win. This isn't like a reductionist. Like one, we're. One's going to outdo the other.

Yeah.

You know, and then how big can that boat get? How, how many people get on that rising tide situation?

Yeah.

And so that's what I mean when I say, you know, gratitude for what is and equally like the improvement. And that's like rising the tide.

Amen. That's awesome. Well, guys, how, how, 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. How do they follow you? Where can they. Where can they find you?

Plunge.com. that's the simplest way for all of our, our social medias, type in plunge. Or even if you might have to type cold plunge, you'll find us plunge, plunge.com.

Amazing, man. Thank you for coming on today. And as always, guys, that's just science.