Psychedelics & Cold Plunging: Generating Resilience Through Hormetic Stress

Podcast Highlights

• Ryan’s transformative experiences with Ayahuasca.
• Drawing similarities between float tanks and ayahuasca ceremonies.
• Ryan’s journey opening float tank centers.
• The core benefits of cold plunging.
• Helpful tips for approaching both cold plunging and psychedelics.
• Cold plunging for psychedelic preparation and integration.
• Reflecting on the growth of Plunge.
• Incorporating sauna into a cold plunging routine.
• Plunge’s exciting products and developments for the future.

Show Links

1. Plunge (use code THIRDWAVE150 for $150 off)
2. Plunge on Instagram
3. (podcast) The Quest for Aliveness: Somatics, Psychedelics, & Trauma Healing - Will Rezin

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This episode is brought to you by Psyched Wellness. Their product, Calm, is an over-the-counter Amanita muscaria extract that may help to reduce stress, ease muscular tension and promote restorative sleep. Their team of leading scientists and wellness professionals has managed to successfully distill the restorative and healing elements from the Amanita muscaria mushroom.

To be one of the first to try this breakthrough product, go to shop.psyched-wellness.com and use the code THIRDWAVEPOD to get 15% off when ordering.

Podcast Transcript

0:00:00.0 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, welcome back to the Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave where we explore how psychedelics can be integrated into culture for the evolution of humanity. Today I am speaking with Ryan Duey, the co-founder of Plunge.

0:00:14.1 Ryan Duey: Cold plunging is a great, awesome tool to learn how to surrender and learn how to be with your breath, which I find a ton of parallel when I go into, especially these deeper states, higher doses of whatever medicine I'm taking. You cold plunge enough, you will learn how to just let go. It's not about fighting the cold. It's about letting go into it. And, it just happens. You'll learn that. It will teach you that. I promise. If you stay consistent. So that is a huge tool to bring into any sort of psychedelic setting.

0:00:47.0 Speaker 3: Welcome to the Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave, audio Mycelium connecting you to the luminaries and thought leaders of the psychedelic Renaissance. We bring you illuminating conversations with scientists, therapists, entrepreneurs, coaches, doctors, and shamanic practitioners, exploring how we can best use psychedelic medicine to accelerate personal healing, peak performance, and collective transformation.

0:01:20.4 Advertisement: Today's episode of the Psychedelic Podcast is brought to you by Psyched Wellness. Psyched Wellness has this amazing product. It's called Calm, and it has been developed by wellness professionals, along with leading scientists, and is the very first over-the-counter amanita muscaria extract that may help you reduce stress, ease muscular tension, and promote deeper, more restorative sleep. This natural supplement is lab tested. It's been detoxified, and it is fully safe for consumption. For the first time in modern history, scientists working with Psyched Wellness have successfully distilled the restorative and healing elements from the amanita muscaria mushroom and placed them into a powerful extract that is now the first legal amanita muscaria extract available for sale in the USA. If you would like to be one of the first to try this breakthrough product, then you can go to shop.psyched-wellness.com. That's shop.psyched P-S-Y-C-H-E-D-wellness.com. And use code THIRDWAVEPOD, that's THIRDWAVEPOD, P-O-D to get 15% off when ordering. Again, that is shop.psyched-wellness.com, and use code THIRDWAVEPOD to get 15% off your order.

0:02:47.7 Paul Austin: Hey, listeners. This is Paul F. Austin, founder and CEO at Third Wave, and welcome back to the Psychedelic Podcast. Today, we're exploring the parallels between cold exposure and psychedelics, delving into the benefits of cold plunging, and understanding how both of these practices can profoundly impact our mental and physical well-being. If you're curious about the intersection of these two worlds, cold exposure and psychedelics, you're not going to want to miss this conversation. And to make sure you don't miss any of our other episodes, make sure you follow the show on your podcast app of choice and subscribe to our YouTube channel at The Third Wave for a ton of amazing video content from us. My guest today is Ryan Duey, co-founder of Plunge. Born and raised in Northern California, he spent a semester abroad in Barcelona. And Ryan's experience was so impactful that after graduation, he returned to Spain and spent two years living in Madrid. He then began to work in the front office of the San Jose Earthquakes. And soon after, Ryan had what he calls his greatest gift, a head-on motorcycle accident in Thailand.

0:03:51.3 Paul Austin: This near-death experience catapulted Ryan into a journey of self-inquiry, leading him to the jungles of the Amazon to drink ayahuasca, the inside of a float tank, and a commitment to entrepreneurship in the health and wellness industry. While building Capitol Floats, Sacramento's premier float center, Ryan traveled to Reboot Float Spa in the Bay Area with the hopes of meeting the owner, Mike Garrett. The two quickly became friends and business confidants, going on to co-found Plunge. Now, if you want to try Plunge for yourself, Ryan has generously offered you, our listeners, a discount of $150 off your order at Plunge.com. Just use the code ThirdWave150. Again, that's Plunge.com and use the code ThirdWave150 at checkout. In my conversation with Ryan, we dive into these life-changing experiences he had, including his motorcycle accident and work with ayahuasca. We explore the parallels between cold plunging and psychedelics and talk about helpful approaches that are common to both practices. Ryan also walks us through how to get the most out of cold plunging and sauna when done together. All in all, we cover Ryan's life-altering experiences, his surprising growth and success, and his mission to make resilience mainstream.

0:05:04.0 Paul Austin: Quick note, we do have Third Wave's 45-Day Microdosing Challenge that is kicking off on January 15th. If you're interested in a group coaching container led by yours truly, it's a six-week process that begins towards the end of January and ends early March. There's a theme and a focus each week, and we'll do this in community. I will lead these one-hour sessions each week, and it'll essentially be a chance to teach a little and also get direct coaching and feedback on your microdosing experience. All right. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Ryan Duey. Hey, listeners. Welcome back to The Psychedelic Podcast. Today, we have Ryan Duey, the co-CEO and co-founder of Plunge. Ryan, it's good to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

0:05:59.1 Ryan Duey: Yeah. Excited to be here, man.

0:06:01.5 Paul Austin: So we connected through a mutual friend a few months ago. And outside of Plunge and all of the incredible work you've done on the product side for cold plunging, which is something that I've loved and have done for a few years now, you also have a very powerful story of transformation with plant medicine. And so I thought it'd be cool to have you on the show. We could talk about plant medicine. We could talk about cold plunging. We can talk about how cold plunging supports plant medicine and vice versa. So let's start with ayahuasca because this was a medicine that you worked with many years ago now. You were definitely ahead of the curve, which is no surprise considering your pioneering work as an entrepreneur. Tell us about what was the impetus for doing ayahuasca, for working with ayahuasca, and what impact has it had on the trajectory of your life?

0:07:04.4 Ryan Duey: It was actually a friend that had heard someone else talking about this probably back in 2010, 2011, right around there. I just started kind of exploring psychedelics. It was taking mushrooms and starting to really engage on a more serious or more intentional path there, kind of like uncovering some things. And my friend had talked about it. And I was like, "what is he talking about?" And then it entered my zeitgeist. It was probably Aubrey Marcus going on to Rogan's podcast back, his first time talking about his journey there. And it was just like, what is this guy talking? What is that? It was just pure curiosity. If any of that is like, if I could go experience 1% of that, or even what is that? Just cure. That's where it started. But no real action was taken. I didn't know, like I said, I didn't know a single person that had ever done it in my sphere. I didn't know how you could go do it. I didn't know anything. There was nothing. I had no real connection to even the legacy and the traditions of it and all of it. Fast forward. I had a really serious accident in Thailand. Was in the hospital for about three weeks. It was actually the friend that had told me about ayahuasca. I was with him on a backpacking trip. It's in the hospital, surgery out there, kind of this whole life-changing experience.

0:08:31.0 Paul Austin: Motorbike accident, like you were just...

0:08:33.6 Ryan Duey: Motorbike accident. Yeah, it was head-on collision. Don't really remember it.

0:08:38.1 Paul Austin: Oh, shit.

0:08:39.3 Ryan Duey: But that was the beginning of a huge adventure for me. Like I said, it was a... I always call it the greatest gift. And it was one of those moments you don't really get to choose when life just totally pivots and whole new perspectives get to enter. And it's very psychedelic in its own right. It's just like, boom here we go. Whole new framework, a whole new viewpoint on everything. And so I remember I was in the hospital bed for weeks in Thailand. My mouth, I had had a jaw. The main impact was broken jaw in multiple places. So I was wired shut, with no food or drink. I was on an IV for 12 days. So you get a lot of time to think laying in that bed. And I was just like, what are you? Life was good, but it was like, okay, now dude, you have life is now and I was about 27. So feeling young, still like life was all in front of me, but it was like, oh, this could go away tomorrow. Really felt that, understood that. And ayahuasca was the thing that had just piqued my curiosity more than anything. And so I was like, I'm... And that was the great adventure that was like, oh, you'll do that someday, that was the thing. And so anyways, fast forward, I was like, I'm in, this is what I'm going to do this year. I'm going to prep my mind and body.

0:10:04.5 Ryan Duey: I'm going to get my body physically back and I'm going to prep whatever that looks, whether getting just my mind, my spirit, everything in place to go down to the jungle. I wanted to go down outside of Iquitos and work with it. And I spent that year at so many cool synchronicities that happened over that year. And it was kind of the... I, was a huge impact into, I started to get into a float tank. It was my first time really, that was the tool I was using first for my body and my mind. Well, fast forward, came out of the jungle. I now own float tank centers and that was my first time in there. And so getting ready for that year and then going down to the jungle that first time and working with it and just had a completely beautiful, intense transformation. I gave everything like it was one of those where I think for a lot of listeners, it's like we have different times when we work with these different tools and there's times we bring a bunch of intentions. Sometimes it's for joy, sometimes it's for laughter. I went in show me my... Let's go into my core. Who am I? What is spirituality? Like to me, these big questions that were resounding. I grew up in a Christian household. And so I had the taste of what is spirituality or religion, and kind of grew up in it and was in it.

0:11:35.1 Ryan Duey: There were a lot, there were some good that came from it. And then like all things, I think you switched to, I hate it. And kind of swung there and was like, I don't, I'd shun that and threw it all out. And then going down there was like this first time where I felt like super authentic into spirituality to me. And still trying it, what is that answer? I don't know that in words, but I felt it. And yeah, it was one of the most incredible experiences and ayahuasca has now become a tool that I work with over the last 10 to 12 years, it's in my life. It's usually a once a year, like where I'm in ceremony for three to four ceremonies and go off and it's my kind of look under the hood. Where am I at? Ask some big questions. My check-in. So ayahuasca has become this incredible tool for me. Grateful for it into just the connection that I have with it, working with it. I find it to be such a mindful substance. To me, it's pure mindfulness 'cause it's so, for me it's like present, like it can get so squirrelly for me and it's just the, like all psychedelics, it's like the meaning can get so what does this mean? And I don't ever have that answer. Like I don't... It's almost like forget what this means. Can you just be in it?

0:13:05.1 Ryan Duey: And it's just that exercise of that kind of over and over and over is how I really work with the tool. The medicine. So yeah, ayahuasca has been this credible thing that's entered my life.

0:13:24.8 Paul Austin: Yeah. It's an ally and the more you work with it, the oftentimes the greater the symbiosis becomes and there's a relationship that's formed. And as you said, you can ask it questions. You can revisit it to look under the hood, if you will. And I think what's interesting about your story in particular is you started a float tank center in 2015. And when float tanks were just becoming a thing, they weren't really all that prominent in 2015. I started to hear about them in 2017, 2018, but you were a couple of years ahead of the curve there. And then Plunge happened in 2020, was ayahuasca, your first introduction to let's say contemplative practices, mindfulness, this sense of mind, body resilience, or did you come from a background previous to ayahuasca that had sort of warmed you up to these concepts and notions outside? Maybe in sort of the church and religion, but if there was, maybe you were an athlete or what sort of helped with that?

0:14:37.5 Ryan Duey: Yeah, that's a great, you mentioned athlete. I think growing up in the church, it raised big questions. I grew up with, there was always more, it was like this, I just, fascinated universal truths and God. And what are these things that was... So I think very early on that was entered, but then sports was definitely the first space of resilience that I grew up in and playing high level soccer and basketball. You have these training sessions that are just pushing you to the max and doing it day after day after day, you push that edge. You get the right coaches in that are taking you past where I think I can go and then improving and then getting stronger and coming back. So I think sports was the number one kind of as a child growing up from resiliency and then float tanks became this huge tool for me. That was the first space of real intentional contemplative reflective time, carving out 60 minutes where I would... Which was such a radical idea for me when I was starting to do it. Like wow, 60 minutes where I'm just going to go into this black box and just be, I thought it was so cool and so interesting. And the concept was so interesting to me. And then you actually get in, you start doing it and it's like layers get peeled back and it becomes this whole new meaning of what that is, a new understanding.

0:16:06.1 Ryan Duey: And so that was, I didn't really have a meditation practice at that time. So that became this form of meditation. And it was almost it had to be so, it's kind of, I think my MO, I like to just jump, go all in as opposed to starting out and be like, "Hey, let's do five minutes every morning and do some meditation." It was like, no, I need to be in this box and by myself and have this experience. And so that was a huge a connection. I had a connection from that from day one. And just what can happen when you kind of put yourself in that 60 minutes or 90 minutes or however long you go and really get that like the swirling mind and it just kind of separates. And it was the first time that you really start to play with for me of time, that's such a radical concept, when you get in there and it's like first time? I'm like, "I don't know if I've been in here for two minutes or 60 minutes." Once you get past a few breaths, it's all just, there's nothing that my mind can connect to from light, from sensory, from you're... You get a few thoughts in and it's all the same.

0:17:20.0 Ryan Duey: Whether that was five hours ago or whether that was 30 minutes ago. So that was such an interesting concept to me of how the mind just, our minds kind of swirl around. And so that was the first experience. And then going into, and then ayahuasca has become that actual tool for me where it is a resilience tool. I actually don't like it. I don't feel, I don't get excited to go. I get super nervous. I get very uncomfortable before I go sit in ceremony. It's not one where I'm giddy with my friends. It's like fuck, I don't want to do this, but I know I have to. It's like a cold plunge. It's like all these other things.

0:18:03.6 Paul Austin: It sounds like every morning on my end.

0:18:07.2 Ryan Duey: Exactly, man, it's like you come out after and you're so thankful and heart open and shedding layers. And it's just incredible what comes out of sitting in ceremony, but I don't like it. But I do it also for that factor of let's go expose yourself to some high discomfort. And what comes is what comes trust this. You do trust this medicine. You trust this ally and let go into it. But fuck, like it is. It's uncomfortable for me. I think that's also...

0:18:38.9 Paul Austin: Like physically, that's emotionally, like where's the discomfort for you when you work with Ayahuasca?

0:18:43.0 Ryan Duey: I think it's the... It could be all of it. I've had all types of scenarios with it, the most discomfort in my body, I've felt to just the most mind and the most uncomfortable scenarios. Of course, I've had the other side of the spectrum where it comes, but I think it's just the fear of the unknown. Like truly rolling the die. Like dude, you're gonna have to let go. And there's some, I love that, that it kind of almost... It's a vehicle for me to go into that as opposed to life where sometimes I can kind of get outta that. But this is like you gotta let go. You're gonna take this and that's what comes now is what comes, it's not in your... You're not really... There's some tools you can bring into it and navigate it, but you're not in full control of this scenario. Not, not, yeah. That's it. So I appreciate.

0:19:41.9 Paul Austin: Surrender.

0:19:41.9 Ryan Duey: Yeah. The surrender and the just you can't script this. Like you can never.

0:19:48.4 Paul Austin: Yeah. And it's almost like a forcing mechanism to some degree, right? Where you're okay, once I commit to this and go in with it, there's the commitment is minimum six hours. And it could be longer. And once you drink the tea, there's no getting out. It's not like a cold plunge where you're like okay, yeah, I really want to go in for four minutes this time, or five minutes this time. And you're just like okay, fuck. After two minutes I'm done. Like let's get out. Once you're in there, you're in there. And what I find is, for me, the somatics of it, the physical discomfort of the way that it sits in my stomach and my gut, it's kind of like I just want it to get out. I want it to get out. And that even just being with the discomfort, again, it's very much similar to a cold plunge. It's just drawn out for like an hour or two hours or three hours or whatever that might be.

0:20:49.8 Ryan Duey: A hundred percent. And it's never what I think it's gonna be, going in. I think that's the beautiful part of psychedelics. It's like the conscious mind. We know what's conscious. What's beautiful about it, is bringing this unconscious, this subconscious, whatever those layers are into it. And that's what's... It's always like a little, I'm a little terrified before of what is actually running my show that I'm about to be exposed to? Where am I carrying weight? Where am I carrying trauma or whatever the thing is? Where am I carrying anger or all this stuff that I've been navigating daily and I haven't known that it's been sitting right there in this blind spot. It's now I'm gonna just get a little light shone on, or it's gonna really come full circle. So I always get a little like my mind just gets nervous for that. I think it's like, I think it's ego protection the ego would much rather just stay like our identity or where we're at. It wants to be exactly where we're at. We'll sit in hell before we, that's where it'd rather be than make the shift to get out of it. It takes real effort. And I think psychedelics are a beautiful part to transform that ego. But it's not natural. It's not natural for our identity to want to step into that.

0:22:16.2 Paul Austin: So, 2015 you opened the float tank centers. Tell us just a little bit about what it was like to be a really early entrepreneur in 2015, building out a float tank center. What were some of the most exciting aspects and what were some of the biggest challenges? And maybe most importantly, what did you learn when opening that float tank center that really helped you with Plunge when you opened that?

0:22:45.2 Ryan Duey: Yeah, so that was still one of the hardest things I've ever been through of getting that first build out done. I mean, full tank centers, I always say if I actually knew... I had the confidence to move forward, but I was so, I was naive enough. If I actually knew what I had to do, I wouldn't have done it.

0:23:06.9 Paul Austin: For sure.

0:23:07.9 Ryan Duey: Which is all things, great things that we do. And yeah, so I was pretty naive into what was the financial cost that it was gonna take. And up quitting. I worked for the San Jose Earthquakes, had a great job. I really enjoyed it. Front office, pro-soccer, and I just quit pretty much cold Turkey.

0:23:32.6 Paul Austin: Wow.

0:23:34.9 Ryan Duey: It was a little, I came back from, there were some steps that took place, but then I quit. I moved to Sacramento. I was I'm launching it in, this company in Sacramento. But I hadn't raised a dollar yet. I didn't have money. Like this was not something that I like had saved up. Back at that time, realistically to do a float center well, you need 250 to 400K to probably get one open. They're not cheap. Float tanks are 32 to 35K just for the unit.

0:23:58.6 Paul Austin: Wow.

0:23:58.7 Ryan Duey: Then you build in the rooms are so unique with... They need to be for salt content. So it's special drywall, it's special tiling, the rooms itself are super expensive. That was just back in we opened the beginning of 2016, but building it out in 2016, they were expensive. So I was pretty naive to the whole thing. I think I was, and so I ended up coming up raising money through kind of a friends and family. It was mostly friends. Like people that I had kind of acquaintances I had built over time that I've now become better friends with. And I was just on this, I was on this mission that it was such a... There was twofold. It was selfishly I wanted to build a facility where I could get around interesting people. That was like my selfish thing. It was like wow, like if I could just be in one of these all day, you know how many cool people I would get to meet? So I was like driven for that. And then there was this selfless side that was like this tool has transformed my life. Like all tools, when they transform your life, we wanna share it.

0:25:04.4 Ryan Duey: We want to talk about it. It's probably why some psychedelics get bad raps, 'cause everyone just wants to fucking talk about it half the time, 'cause it changed your life. [laughter] Floating was that for me and...

0:25:14.5 Paul Austin: Shut up already. You know, right? [laughter]

0:25:16.5 Ryan Duey: Yeah. And it's like I get it. I appreciate when people are so passionate about, and that was kind of there for me. And so it was, man, there's no float tanks in anywhere. And so it's like how cool is it to build a space where people are intentionally finding time to just go be by themselves? That was so cool to me. So I was on that mission and raised money and we ended up long story short, we got it all done and we actually did it in... Brought some investors in. We did it in really quick timing, but I did the whole general contracting of it.

0:25:53.3 Ryan Duey: I have no background in construction or project management or any of that. So that was like it was really hard for me. It kind of took me to... It was the first time I'd ever really had, went in so sound, I was coming out of the jungle, this mission. So in my body and in my power to like literally limping across the finish line, by the time we opened, it was the first time I had really even toyed with, what if you just ended this? Like Not even finishing this project. It was like I don't think I was that close to, anyways, it was the first time thoughts like that were coming in and that's where it took me. It was just what it was to what actually went through.

0:26:35.2 Ryan Duey: And so we got it open, thankfully, and the community received it from day one. It was like something I'm so grateful for that it was, if you build it, they will come type scenario. And we built a really cool community in Sacramento and met a lot of cool people starting to work there and people floating and that was... Fast forward to Plunge and what that meant for Plunge. Well, I met Mike Garrett, who's my co-founder and co-CEO with Plunge. He was building Reboot Float & Cryo in... Or is really just a float spa to start in San Francisco. So he had gotten it open in actually 2015. And I was like, and here, his story was crazy, similar to mine, transformational experience in Thailand. Went down to the jungles of Amazon, comes out, wants to start a float center.

0:27:19.4 Ryan Duey: I don't even know this guy. I'm just like, it's like who, that's my story. Like what? And I was like blown away. And so I went down right when he opened, he's working the front desk. And I was like yo, we're gonna be friends. We have very similar age. We've spent the next five years just building a really good friendship. We did a big fundraiser for MAPS when they were going through their phase three trials for MDMA assisted psychotherapy. And so we brought, rallied the whole float community together and raised money through floating to donate to that. And that was like a... It was a... So we built this friendship and fast forward to 2020 and the companies get shut down, COVID happens. We hit this very unique moment in time and Mike, not that we were ever really planning to do business together, we had mad respect for each other, full trust in character and ethics and all that stuff had been through like been in ceremony together, been in deep psychedelic sessions.

0:28:22.3 Ryan Duey: So we had gone places together. We had done some transformational courses together. So there was like a... If you were gonna line up what a partnership could look we were there into like trust and like knowing who the other person was. And then he kind of pitches me on, we were really into cold plunging, and it was something we were doing. We'd been doing it for years before and didn't really look at it as like a business opportunity ever. And then pandemic hits and he was just like man, I think I can create a cold plunge. There's nothing out there, there's no unit that's at this price point that's beautiful, that works. So that was it. And he pitched me on it and took me a little time to kind of get to the spot to be like yeah, let's do it.

0:29:08.3 Ryan Duey: And then Plunge launched in September of 2020. And then that was like the fastest thing I've ever been a part of so far over the last three years. And I think it's because the seeds we planted, him and I over our friendship, through psychedelics, all of that stuff we didn't know we were actually building Plunge before Plunge was even a concept. It allowed us once we said go, it was exponential. And it's been that way and I don't think it's... That's also product market fit and where the culture was at, and zeitgeist and all the things that were happening. We didn't just do that, but it allowed us to keep up. It's why we even co-CEO this company. It's a very unique thing. I think for us as partners I can't imagine not doing it that way. And I think it's a rare where most companies usually have one. And we have... Him and I are the board. We talk through everything together. We've never had any sort of... Well disagreements. We have difference of opinions, but when it comes to a big decision, we've never had an issue whatsoever. Due to the trust that we've had, that we've built through I think a lot of these tools and a lot of these that this podcast talks about.

0:30:24.8 Paul Austin: So that brings us sort of to December 2023. I mean, not fully, right, where you opened this in September 2020, right. You've seen massive growth over the last few years. Plunge has really become, I would say the market leader in cold plunging in something that you can have at home, like you said, that has a nice aesthetic that is filtrated, that stays cold. You don't need to buy ice everyday. All these sorts of things. And I wanna unpack the business element a little bit more, mostly out of personal curiosity. But before we get into that, especially for our listeners who maybe they haven't tried cold plunging themselves, maybe they've heard about it a little bit here and there, they're curious, they may want to try it. Just give us sort of the five minute overview of what are some of the core benefits of cold plunging? Why is it such a phenomenal practice to do on a consistent basis?

0:31:32.3 Ryan Duey: Yeah, I think first and foremost, I always just start with, there hasn't been a tool that I've discovered for an ROI on your time for how you feel. You need to give two minutes. That's really all it is. Two minutes. You don't even have to do anything. All you gotta do is get in it and breathe and it will teach you how to surrender. If you consistently do this, you will learn how to let go and you will come out feeling incredible. And that just happens every single time. So at the highest level, we can get into kind of what's happening, why that is, I just start there. Like your mental state, your mood, your energy. There's nothing better on ROI and time. There are great other tools out there. This is not a silver bullet, however, that is my top, top of the line.

0:32:19.2 Ryan Duey: What is going on here? I think we hear about this dopamine increase that's getting in, your body's coming out getting, they talk about 250%. Susanna Soiberg, Huberman, all these people have kind of brought this to light. 250% dopamine increase. Well, you can get that through a lot of things. Dopamine can come from a lot of different areas. The beautiful part about this is it's sustained. You don't get out and you don't get this high. Yeah, you feel super elevated when you come out, but you don't come out and then start crashing and then like get sluggish. Like you only just kind of... You get this wind in your sails for the next, 6, 8, 10 hours that just kind of is there and you're feeling good. That's a huge one. I think it's a space. So you're getting in and you're inducing the fight or flight mechanism.

0:33:08.5 Ryan Duey: You're getting this hit of adrenaline that comes in your body. There's very few things that you can manufacture to create that environment. Usually that comes in unexpected moments. That comes from someone cutting you off, that comes from someone yelling at you. It comes from some statement that jars whatever it is, like something on the street happening where this, you get to prepare to go into that and you can calm yourself down into it, so you can actually start to teach yourself to respond as opposed to react in a fight or flight scenario. So I think that is, you play that out daily over time. The compounding impact to that, I don't know if we fully understand what that does, but like building this business is like for me, I'll bring my example. Building this business has been very hard. It's been awesome. It's been great. My consistent piece is I cold plunge every single morning. I'm not saying the success is just due to cold plunging, but it's a factor that I have been tested and had to grow quicker than I've really ever had to building this company. I get thrown curve balls all the time.

0:34:21.8 Ryan Duey: I believe that it has helped in that process. There's other benefits we can get deeper into the brown fat. And Dr. Susanna Soiberg was the one that's really brought that to light and brown fat. What is brown fat? We have white fat, we have brown fat. White fat is kind of the fat we all think about. It's energy storage. It kind of, it's the fat that we don't want showing up on our body. And then we have this brown fat that it's complete opposite, it's energy production and getting in cold water. And there's still room for understanding this more of how long is it, is it maybe going not as cold of a temperature but a little longer to activate? We don't know. But brown fat is kind of the antithesis to white fat.

0:35:06.2 Ryan Duey: So if you can get, activate your brown fat, which cold water has shown to do, increases metabolism, cuts down on white fat, it's been shown to help with cancer cells within the body. A great study came out about a year ago showing low sugar diets with cold plunging or basically cold water exposure. People with tumors that came into the study. The tumors either minimized or they didn't have the tumor after the study to the point that they suggested and they recommended cold water to be a treatment for cancer. This lab came out of that. So a lot of cool, like we're discovering that into like what it's doing and I can go, these kind of are... We see these things all the time. It's really cool with the gig that we have probably more firsthand data of people's experience in cold water than outside of maybe Wim Hof and what he's experienced, so.

0:36:05.0 Paul Austin: Well, I mean, I'm curious, what are some of the more like novel or extreme or memorable anecdotes that you've heard from people who have started to cold plunge in terms of how it's changed their life?

0:36:16.9 Ryan Duey: I mean, a pretty general one that we see is autoimmune disorders. So people coming in with some sort of autoimmune issue very quickly as a regulate, like majority have a massive regulation within that category. I mean, we've had a lot with COVID, people with like long haul COVID type symptoms doing everything for it. Start cold plunging, body gets back into some level of homeostasis. Recovery scores go down a whoop in aura. They get back in the green, they're sleeping. Like it's just these, all these downstream impacts that are happening, lot with anti-anxiety and depressive medicines. People actually transitioning out of those medications and using cold plunging as their prescription. And it's something you have to do consistently. We just did a piece with a woman, a mom I forget which anxiety medication she was on, anyways, she started cold plunging and now it's literally like a cold plunge is her prescriptive medicine, doesn't take any medication. Cold plunging every single morning. Very challenging days, days that it swirls even more. She'll just do two. And she's I'm good. I just can manage my life this way. I can now feel things that I didn't get to feel, that is a real, and there's real... There's some cool studies I think over the next 12 months that will come out in this category. And not just cold, but heat as well into these extreme temperatures of what it's doing for...

0:38:01.0 Ryan Duey: Especially depression. Yeah, we're supporting a couple... I mean, we're talking world renowned facilities, research centers that are studying this now. And the early results are incredible into what this is. And it's a, it's just another form, it's another tool. And I think a lot of us that do cold plunging, high heat sauna and these other... Yeah, they're trendy wellness tools, but there's a, there's something behind them. That's why so many people are doing them consistently. They are a totally different, they help with the overall happiness and fulfillment in life and just those thing that, what you start to feel when you're not in those depressive states. And there's real, like, biological responses that are happening in the body that's there, of why that's happening. So it's I get, there's a ton, I can kind of ramble on forever into the impacts that it has.

0:39:01.5 Paul Austin: It could be the rest of this episode plus some. I mean, Huberman has done, Andrew Huberman has done a ton of great content specific to cold, specific to sauna. So if any listeners wanna do like the really deep scientific dive on how it affects, I know there's like a few stats I remember that Huberman came out with was like, or amplified through his platform was like, if you get 11 minutes of cold plunging a week, that's sort of like the magic number. And there was another thing that I remember, which was, it raises baseline levels of dopamine 3x and it actually maintains, whereas if you smoke cigarettes or if you eat chocolate, you get a dopamine spike, but you also see a dopamine drop. Whereas with cold plunging that dopamine spike maintains. And I think a lot of what you're talking about in terms of creating a container to respond to a fight or flight reaction, it's this concept of hormesis, which a lot of our listeners have heard me talk about before, which is, subjecting ourselves to some level of hormetic stress actually allows us to become more resilient 'cause it forces our body and our brain to adapt. And I think the key with that is feeling like we have choice or agency in that process. Because if we don't, then it can actually be traumatizing in many ways. If we are overwhelmed.

0:40:32.2 Ryan Duey: And I think that's a great point for just cold plunging in general, or anyone listening like where to start out, it's like there's a, it is a traumatic event and so you need to be intentional about it. And dose and duration matter, like all of this stuff. And so getting in to make sure you're getting in at a temp that doesn't force you to get out. Can you get in at a temp where you can actually regulate your body? 'Cause that's the signal you're looking for. You're looking for two signals. You're looking for your breath to get taken away. Can you get in and like get your heart rate high? Cool, lot of temperatures can do that. Most of the time sub 60 for most people is gonna do that. Can you do that? And then can you get to a spot that you're choosing, you say agency that you're choosing to get out of the water, and you'll know, there's a distinct... And the longer you go, you'll hit new walls and you'll kind of push through different barriers.

0:41:26.9 Ryan Duey: But the most important is that first one. And that comes at 45 seconds, one minute. You kind of feel your body just oof, you can have a wearable, you can start to see your heart rate and get real feedback on there. There's ways to do it, but you also can just feel into it. And those are the important characteristics that you wanna look for. Breath getting taken away. And then can you regulate and actually get your heart rate back down and feel like you're choosing to step outta the water as opposed to the water's forcing you to get out.

0:41:54.5 Paul Austin: And what's relevant here in what you're hinting at is like start low and go slow. It's how I often will communicate when we're working even with something like a psychedelic substance. A lot of folks who are relatively new to this, you don't need to take like six grams of mushrooms right off the bat. You could do a microdose, you could do a slightly higher dose than a microdose. And that's what I'm hearing you say. It's like for a lot of folks, just ease your way into it. Right? If you need to start at 50 degrees and go in for a minute, don't feel like you have to be the badass who goes in at 32 degrees for five minutes right off the bat. So there's a way in which we're developing sort of the resourcefulness to breathe and regulate. And part of committing to a practice is, don't overstretch yourself. Because overstretching can often lead to sort of a backlash. And that defeats the purpose of a lot of this. Whether it's cold plunging, whether it's psychedelics, whatever it is, right? Like incremental changes are most sustainable.

0:43:01.8 Ryan Duey: And I'd say also going, similar to a lot of parallels here. I'm thinking through with psychedelics. It's like first trip, do it with someone you trust. Like who is someone that you're really... Cold plunging can be that thing where it's like, I don't think I can do it. Maybe you have that swirl. Like, no, there's no way I could sit through this. We're a lot stronger when we're with someone. When you have someone that's like grounding you in, holding time for you, talking to you like, you are so much more capable than we think or we are. And so I think that's a good, good tool, good outlet as well. When you're starting out. Like find someone to do it with you your first time, second time. Recognize that you've, build that pattern. I can do this. And then like you say, start at a temp, don't go... Again, this is like a gym for your nervous system. This isn't... In a gym getting back into working out, you're not gonna go do a CrossFit workout with a ultimate athlete. You're gonna just get in, you're gonna sweat, you're gonna feel it, you're gonna show back up tomorrow, and you're gonna kind of repeat and you'll naturally get to a spot where you're doing more weight, you're pushing further. That's the same as getting in cold water.

0:44:11.8 Paul Austin: So you've worked quite a bit with psychedelics, we've already talked about your personal work with ayahuasca, you know cold plunging in and out. And for our listeners in particular, many of them are interested in this overlap of intentional psychedelic work with behavioral change that leads to a greater sense of wellbeing. So that's something we talk about a lot and we emphasize, it's like tangible transformation happens in the physical body. It's about what you eat, it's about how you move, it's about how you sleep. It's about how you exercise or expose yourself to different aspects of hormetic stress. So when we're exploring that overlap, the overlap of intentional psychedelic use and overall wellbeing what are just your sort of top of mind thoughts about how cold plunging may be useful either to prepare for an experience with psychedelics or potentially and more importantly to integrate after a psychedelic experience. What might be the benefit of having a cold plunge practice as part of that relationship with psychedelics?

0:45:23.8 Ryan Duey: I think the prep, I think there's three phases. I could say it's like pre, during, post. Pre, I think it cold plunging is a great, it is a awesome tool to learn how to surrender and learn how to be with your breath. Which I find a ton of parallel when I go into, especially these deeper states, higher doses of whatever medicine I'm taking. You cold plunge enough, you will learn how to just let go. It's not about fighting the cold, it's about letting go into it. And your first time starting out, a lot of us wanna fight. I did five minutes. It's like, were you tense or were you able to surrender? And that's it just happens. You'll learn that it will teach you that, I promise, if you stay consistent. So that is a huge tool to bring into any sort of psychedelic setting.

0:46:18.9 Ryan Duey: Like learning how to, when it gets challenging, when it gets something's coming and it's just right and center, can you... The more we resist it, the more we fight it, the more intense it gets. Can you... Can we let go into it? Can we accept it? Can we recognize it? That is, that's a huge tool there. During, still trying to understand really what's there. I know I had, I was in a ayahuasca ceremony about a year ago, at the house we were at, it had a cold plunge.

0:46:48.3 Paul Austin: Interesting.

0:46:49.2 Ryan Duey: And it was a really nice tool during the day just to get in. Like, we didn't go extreme, but just like, you're spending the next day reflecting, just kind of connecting. Just, I would go do it like an hour and a half before ceremony and just kind of get in, regulate down, get outta my mind a little and just be like, okay. It was almost like, it's almost a form of meditation when you get out of the cold plunging, it's similar. You feel that same state where you're, the mind is pretty central and focused. And so I think that's a... It's an interesting tool for it. And then post, I would float tanks, saunas, cold plunging. I think anything elemental of getting back in your body and being in your body and connecting actually with the physical sensation and just the grounding in of it is a great tool. You know, to just, you've gone to the ethereal, you're out, you're now at that window's closing, you come back, we're back in this full, in this physical state. Those are great tools. Same with sweating in anyway, whether it's just like a light workout, it doesn't have to be. I just think these are great ways that I found post ceremonies, post psychedelic journeys that I've worked in. And I think those are those are kind of my go-tos.

0:48:16.2 Paul Austin: So one other thing that I've experimented with, and by no means am I recommending this and I thought about putting you on the spot and asking you about it, but probably better to speak from personal experiences, microdosing or super low dose, could be either psilocybin or LSD with something like a cold plunge and saunas, but cold plunges are a bit more particular because what's interesting about psychedelics is there's been some research lately that's come out that pain tolerance is just as high with low doses of LSD as it is with opiates, which is super interesting. And so the other thing that I've tried a bit here and there, and again, I was talking with a friend a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about this overlap of psychedelics and cold plunging, and he mentioned how a friend of his took a bunch of like a high dose of psilocybin mushrooms, went in the cold plunge, thought he was a narwhal, couldn't get him out, ended up having to pull him out and put him in front of the fire so he won't get hypothermia.

0:49:24.1 Ryan Duey: So I think there are some things that people need to be mindful of, but at very low doses it feels like, especially for those who may have a little bit more hesitation or are getting used to it, it kind of, what I've noticed is with low doses, they just help to create a little bit of spaciousness. They help the body to quicker adapt. They provide a little bit more of a sense of just letting go and surrendering. And so I'm always interested in like, the overlaps, right? And microdosing or low dosing with saunas, I really love, as long as there's proper hydration. But I think with cold plunging, it's something I've experimented with a little bit and I've definitely found there to be some benefit with it.

0:50:11.0 Ryan Duey: Yeah. It's not something I have a ton of experience with. Microdosing is not a consistent part of my practice. I have...

0:50:23.3 Paul Austin: Got it.

0:50:23.4 Ryan Duey: It has been interesting. You talk about the higher doses, and again, it's always take responsibility. People need to be responsible for their actions and think it through. But I have been pulled aside at like a number of conferences where it's like people just pull me aside, it's been a number, like I would say three to four times.

0:50:44.3 Paul Austin: Wow.

0:50:49.0 Ryan Duey: People just pulled me aside and been like, "I had the most spiritual experience of my life on mushrooms, and I got in either a cold river or I got in your cold plunge." And it like, and I could just see in their eyes, they're just sharing this most magical moment that I think I would assume it's just you're combining these two intense moments and you're bringing it in, and then you bring the power of letting go into it. Anyways, I've... Which has surprised me, I didn't expect that, I never really, but it's been cool to kind of hear some people have been like, and I don't think any of them that told me that, expected it either. It wasn't like they were like, "I'm going to take this dose and I'm going to get in cold water and have this experience." It was like, it just, the journey kind of led them that way.

0:51:33.9 Paul Austin: Intuitively felt right, and then...

0:51:35.1 Ryan Duey: Yeah, they got in and had these kind of truly life altering, like big time, like some real powerful intense stuff shifts in their life, recognitions that... And then here, see this is months after, and then they, the life pivoted and they're these awareness that was brought forward into their marriage, their personal actions, like these things. And so it's been cool to kind of hear these tools in certain moments like form as a superpower and facilitate this like, extreme transformation.

0:52:07.9 Paul Austin: So Plunge starts in... We're gonna go back to some timelines. September, 2020 in the midst of COVID, the only one available at that time that I knew of was the Morozko Forge and that was very expensive. It's even more expensive now. And so as I was doing some research, it was clear that you wanted to roll out an offer that was sub $5000 that looked nice, that had good filtration, all these sorts of things. Have you been surprised by the trajectory of growth these last few years? Or would you say the reason that you started it was because you expected that this would really take off as sort of a phenomenon in broader culture? Kind of what are your thoughts on just, yeah, how the last few years have been.

0:52:56.5 Ryan Duey: To this scale? Absolutely not.

0:52:58.9 Paul Austin: No.

0:52:59.5 Ryan Duey: Did not envision this. I wasn't even thinking past. Look, we decided to build 20, we were gonna sell 20. That was the start of this whole company. It was Mike and I in a garage, and we had our brick and mortar, our float tank business is where like, we could hand deliver these, let's just email them. And that's how we sold our first 20. And so I bring that up into, I think there was a power in not getting caught up into how big this was, or even like, being focused on that. It was just, let's just go execute. Like whatever this turns into, this is like A to B to C to D. Like, there was no, like, we gotta get to Z. It's been that way, as a more mature company now. Yes, there's a lot more forecasting and planning that goes into it. Got a lot of employees, it's a different ball game now, but early on it was, it's just the next thing. How do we get to the next thing? And you know, that you look back and it's a snowball that just kind of got bigger and bigger and bigger. But I do think there are a number of factors that played into it. I think the... I was surprised that culturally and just the general population was more open to this than what I... Sometimes I run in my own circles and I don't quite know what else is going on out there and, or I think I do, but I and so I didn't quite know and I was, I thought it would take a longer... Did I think it could become big?

0:54:31.5 Ryan Duey: Yes. I never put a number to that, but I have been surprised at how many people want to spend $5000 to get in cold water and do something really hard. I didn't really think our population was there at this scale, which has been so cool to see. And then you throw in you get these cultural moments with D. Andrew Huberman's and just social media playing into it and these things that are rising up at this moment where we're just kind of plugged into that, it's right timing, executing on what we're doing, but we're just a piece to this that's happened. And you throw that all in and things can accelerate very quickly nowadays.

0:55:15.4 Paul Austin: Okay. Last thing I wanna talk about is saunas, because the last few years you've exclusively focused on the cold plunge. And recently, I don't know if it's fully out yet, which you can clarify for us, but recently you've come out with a sauna. And we've talked about saunas a little bit, but I want to go into a little more detail about this relationship between Sauna and cold plunge and basically how to navigate between the two. You know, do I sauna before I cold plunge? Do I sauna after I cold plunge? Do I cold plunge, wait 20 minutes and then go in the sauna? Like how do you look at, do I cold plunge in the mornings and sauna in the evenings? When you're looking at sort of the optimal use between these two core wellness items, how do you flow between those items?

0:56:10.8 Ryan Duey: So cold's like my daily tool, I use that every single morning. That's a sauna's probably about three times a week for me. And then I'll probably... And then I do one where it's like a true contrast where I am going back and forth for multiple sessions and that's like what I would consider an active recovery day. It's a day, maybe I did work out in the morning, but maybe not my most extreme workout. But if you're gonna be doing back and forth, multiple sessions, multiple rounds, it's a big hit on the body. It's a big caloric expenditure. It's a lot of adrenaline in the body. So I just say be mindful of that. Like that's not, you could definitely kind of you can overdo it. And we see that a lot into, if you're just going back and forth and not hydrating correctly or thinking like, I'm gonna work out really hard today and then I'm just gonna do that all the time. It's a, it's not an everyday thing to be doing contrast that intensely. You can, what I like to do is, when I do sauna, is I do my... We have, I use, we have a high heat sauna. So for ours it's very short windows of time that you need to go in 15 minutes at 200 plus. Like you could get in and it's very...

0:57:25.0 Ryan Duey: They're intense. It's almost like a plunge in its own way where you're focused. You get down to those final couple minutes and you got to really focus in the breath and the walls are closing in and here we go focus in. But then I like to do that in the evening and there's some dynamics to that where you heat your body up your body is going to want to cool itself down. So when you go to bed we always want to run cooler. So yeah, it is counterintuitive to heat your body up but your body will naturally turn on its mechanism to bring the temperature down. And so that helps with... That's why a lot of people sleep really well post sauna. I like to get in the cold plunge for about 45 seconds to a minute after a sauna especially when I do it in the evening. For me it's not a full-fledged cold plunge where I'm going all in but it just kind of brings my temp down a bit and then my body... My body is still at, the core temperature's hot so it's going to bring itself down. That's just how I like to do it. And our rule of thumb is always end on the cold. I mean it doesn't have to be a three minute cold plunge. It doesn't have to be a four minute cold plunge. It doesn't even have to be a two minute. I would say it actually...

0:58:35.9 Ryan Duey: Go for 30 to 45 seconds and just kind of get, in regulate the... Get your breath kind of calmed down. You really just kind of cool off. You come out but you feel that energy sometimes getting out of a sauna it's euphoric but it brings... Your energy comes down, which is fine if you're going to bed but a lot of the times just getting a 45 second cold zap in there you come out and you feel alive. So that's been the rule of thumb that we've... Myself, the company, our partners have all kind of come together and we just feel like ending on the cold's a good rule of thumb.

0:59:12.0 Paul Austin: So we've got five minutes left. So for the last five minutes I'd love to just as co-CEO as co-founder of Plunge which you've massively scaled and grown over the last few years looking five maybe seven 10 years out from now. How do you see the sort of growth and evolution of the company? Is it just... Can we sell more cold plunges? How do we sell more saunas? How do we get more people who are interested in this? Or is there another element to your grand master plan as it relates to health and wellness and ensuring people can become as healthy as possible?

0:59:51.1 Ryan Duey: Yeah, I think the core... I mean our core mission is make resilience mainstream so...

0:59:53.4 Paul Austin: Hmm, okay.

0:59:55.2 Ryan Duey: Our products... That's the North Star. So any product that gets entered in is it helping develop a more resilient self? And we are always... A big thing we're always focused on is disrupting ourselves. Yeah, we are, like you said a market leader in this but it's like so always looking at what we're doing and how do we disrupt that, not to be disrupt... That is a core thing we're looking at. So from products we have some products that's already in the roadmap for the next 12 to 18 months past that. To me it's kind of an exploration of Mike and I really it's... There are always going to be products that we are, at our core do. There's not a product that's like oh the world seems to like that. Let's turn that into a product. It's more of like no we are all in on this. We've done it. We know what this is. We can speak to it authentically so I don't know. Yeah, I have some things that we are into right now but two years from now, I don't know what new products or new modalities that I haven't even experienced yet.

1:01:05.6 Ryan Duey: So I think that's exciting to me, kind of staying at the fore-front and edge there. We wanna just keep making different, just improving... It's a fun time where there's technology and cold plunging there's actual world-class engineers and people on our team and other places working on this product and saunas. And so it's how do we make this better? How do we make this even more simple?

1:01:28.0 Ryan Duey: Getting price points more... Getting price points down for some types of products we're coming out with. What are the... What's the product that fits different market segments? Like right now we do really well in the backyard sector. Not everyone has a backyard. A lot of people live in apartments and how do we get a product that can fit into urban demographics? So we're always thinking there. The company itself there's some international expansion that we'll be entering into.

1:02:01.0 Paul Austin: Is the vast majority of your business at this point and I would assume it's in the United States, is it Canada as well? It sounds like you're looking at Europe. Do you ship to Europe currently? How is that as the products are big and heavy?

1:02:18.8 Ryan Duey: It's pretty much our whole business right now. The US, we do have a distributor partner in Canada. So if you're in Canada you can buy units up there. We do ship around the world but it's really... It's an exorbitant amount for shipping so the goal... Where we'd want to get to is into countries where it's direct to consumer. Consumer can come buy it, it's warehoused out there. It's shipped directly to your home, your business. And then the next big frontier here is what we consider enterprise. And that's commercial facilities. That's hospitality, where very few gyms have this as a tool some do but very few do. Very few hotels have this as a modality in their setup. So that's a big focus for us as a business to which we see as the entry point to a lot of people to actually try this out. We know that if people get into cold water it becomes a tool that's like okay, I understand what this is about. It's not just a concept that sounds expensive, but if we can get it there there's a true exponential impact of how to get this at a whole bigger scale to grow in this market, this industry, building this concept of resilience and making these tools a little more mainstream.

1:03:46.0 Paul Austin: Is there a pretty strong appetite, like in talking with hotels and gyms and other places that may have this? Is there a pretty strong appetite? Have we sort of reached the cultural zeitgeist where a Ritz-Carlton or a Four Seasons or a Hilton or even a boutique gym is really interested and open? Or have you found some challenges in starting to open up that enterprise door?

1:04:09.7 Ryan Duey: The interest is massive so it is like the number one modality that's recommended across gyms right now. We've done surveys with different partners. We're piloting in some of the big gyms that you would recognize the names and they're all in on it. It's really now which is super exciting that we're at kind of the forefront of this is like you can't just... It's not a treadmill that you just roll out into the gym. There's a process to this. How does the room get built? Is this a fire and ice room that gets built? Is this an add-on membership? Is this going in the locker room? Does this go on the pool deck? How do you get the staff involved in this first? How do you educate the teams to actually talk about this? So those have been the things that we've been working on for the last 12 to 18 months, feeling like we have a good understanding and now it's like a lot of these decisions are just long decisions as opposed to... The smaller gyms that are two to four locations doing really well there. People can make decisions quick but these 50, 100, 250, 500 location facilities it's just a much bigger rollout for them. But it's...

1:05:08.8 Paul Austin: Gotcha.

1:05:10.4 Ryan Duey: The interest is absolutely there. And so we're fired up, our new product that just comes out way more equipped. That came out in October. Way more equipped for commercial type settings, the robustness of it, the effectiveness of it. There's a whole other level of the use case from someone's backyard.

1:05:29.7 Paul Austin: How is it different? What did you change about the one that came out in October?

1:05:36.6 Ryan Duey: So the new one, it's... Well, we actually... So, our current... The plunge line that we really launched in the garage, yeah, we've improved it a thousand times over the last three years was really... We engineered the design but we didn't engineer the products. They were really off the shelf parts, let's say. That we've improved in and where this current one was... Our full house team of engineers designed and built this cold plunge based off of all the data that we had received, what was important, what are the key... How to make it quieter, how to make it cool faster, how to make it the whole compressor in the system, like can it maintain temperature better? All these things that were for a gym, you could have 20 people get in in an hour. That's a lot of warm bodies at 98, 94 degrees, whatever, getting into this skin temperature heating this water up. How do you make sure that it stays at 48 degrees, that every single person get in plus it's cycling at a rate that's X number of gallons per hour that is moving the water through cleaning it?

1:06:45.3 Ryan Duey: And then we've added other factors of auto dosing for chemical maintenance and things like that that are needed in a commercial facility. There's a lot of regulations too. Drains need to be a certain distance apart, footprint size, all these different departments of health matter and that's who's going to sign off on this. So there's been a lot of learnings into what goes into that product. So we have our plunge all in which we released which has been really well received. It's our most premium product. And there's a residential form. It's like our all-in-one integrated kind of tech forward product, connect to the app kind of put it on cycles. You can change your temp from wherever you're at. And then there's upgraded features within that for a commercial setting. And so we're excited on that product. The tech and the engineering that went into that will be able to be replicated into different use case models that we will be releasing at different price points different settings that they could be fit into. So that's where we're real excited what's coming from a product standpoint.

1:07:55.5 Paul Austin: Epic. Well, it's been quite an interview. We've covered the gamut, ayahuasca, cold plunge, sauna, float tanks.

1:08:10.5 Ryan Duey: Like department regulations.

1:08:45.2 Paul Austin: Department... Yeah, all the things. Thanks for coming on plunge.com and in the show notes we'll have a link. There will be some sort of discount code for the audience. I think we're still setting it up on the backend but I'll edit it in to ensure that we can get that out to everyone. Any other final thoughts or perspectives to share with our audience or other additional places or things to check out?

1:08:48.3 Ryan Duey: No, you nailed it. I mean I appreciate you man. I appreciate this message and how you go about sharing it. So it's obviously a high impact subject matter that has a lot of trade-offs in each direction and I think you do an incredible job of being a spokesperson for it. Yeah, so thanks for having me on.

1:09:02.7 Paul Austin: Thank you, Ryan. This is fun.

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1:09:07 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, Paul here. I hope you enjoyed our episode today with Ryan. As always check out the link in the description to go deeper into this episode with full show notes, transcripts and all the links we mentioned in this conversation. And you can continue this conversation with us in Third Waves Community at community.thethirdwave.co. We have a page dedicated to the podcast where you can drop us a comment or question about this week's episode. While you're at it check out the rest of the platform where you can find support, discussions, as well as high quality education, resources and providers across our global ecosystem. Sign up for free at community.thethirdwave.co.