Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Contrast Therapy Growth: Scaling Cold Plunge Products to Thousands of Customers with Kyle Ponton

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Contrast Therapy Growth: Scaling Cold Plunge Products to Thousands of Customers with Kyle Ponton · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Growth Class.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Phil Mastiello, and today we're cutting through the fluff to talk about what it actually takes to build a product-based business that stands for something in an era of disposable everything.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: My guest today is a guy who saw a gap in the market and didn't just try to fill it with another cheap import, decided to build the best version of the product on the planet right here in the USA.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's a CEO and co-founder of The Cold Life, a brand that takes the wellness world by storm, or that is taking the wellness world by storm.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to dive into his journey from car sales to manufacturing, the Rolls-Royce of Cold Plunges, why he walked away from overseas suppliers to bring his production to Miami, and how he's using psychological drivers like certainty and status to scale a premium brand.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Please welcome to the show, Kyle Ponton.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Kyle, thanks for joining us.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for taking the time.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh why don't you give us a little bit of history?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, what an intro, Phil.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to uh happy to be here.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, the the short intro is the short history is that uh, you know, I started this brand, the Cold Life, about four years ago now, uh, with really a vision in mind that we felt like there just wasn't really a a product in the marketplace for cold plunging that felt like people wanted to put it inside of their houses.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of bathtubs, inflatables, cheap Chinese overplace or overseas products that just didn't feel very natural.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I went to go look to get one, the very first indicator was asking my wife, you know, what would this look like in our backyard or our back patio?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the immediate answer was we're not putting a bathtub back in our backyard.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I uh I figured, you know, if if I'm going through that, then there's gotta be a lot of other people I think that are probably experiencing similar uh pain points.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, that was kind of the the birth of it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I fell in love with cold plunging as an activity myself.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I went to a spa one day, was extremely sick and couldn't get really anything to kick the illness.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was on ZPACs and ibuprofen and all these different things and just couldn't quite get over the hump.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh one day I went to a spa and did like contrast.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we're doing cold plunging and sauna back and forth.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um I just I came out of that thing about three hours later and and I was revived.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like a brand new man and it really woke up to you know what what the power of cold plunging really can do.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that inflammation, the power of what it does for really kickstarting your day, kickstarting the mental side of things.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just felt incredible.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, man, I need to really dive into this because this is a powerful thing.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what really kickstarted the journey.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah, four years later, we've now sold, you know, I don't know, almost nearly 10,000 of these things across the country and the world.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it started with our kind of original ultimate pro ultimate plunge product, which is what we're known most for, which is that vertical made out of aluminum made right here in America, as you mentioned.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and now we've expanded into other products, uh, uh some cheaper and some more entry-level models.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then also we have just recently this past year, really expanded um the brand into water filtration.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we now offer uh premium filtered shower heads and filtered water products as we feel like that is a really good adjacent category to be in and and to be serving our customers.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we tell our customers all the time if you can't afford one of our cold plunges to get started in a cold shower, and so we figured why not make a product that could accommodate that.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um I I I read somewhere about you that you talk about how uh cold plunging isn't just about recovery, but it's about doing the hard things first.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm not sure what you mean about that.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could explain that, because I use that term in when I coach entrepreneurs about doing the hard things first.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, no, that's a great question.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think in simple uh form, I'm a big believer in trying to get the the big stuff out of the way first.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I mean by hard stuff is when I go and take my cold plunge every single morning, uh, there's never a day that I'm really pumped to get in that thing.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I go out on my balcony, I stare it in the face uh every time, and I'm I'm never pumped to really get in it.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: But every time I get out of it, um I'm extremely grateful, you know, when I come out of it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I always say that if I can get through the cold plunge, and there's nothing really else that I can't get through for the rest of the day.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's really more just about building that discipline of habit and doing those hard things, which really builds kind of that mental muscle of being able to continuously do those hard things.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you get an email or you get a whatever call or something happens in your day and you don't really want to handle it, you know, getting in that cold plunge, um, it reminds me of that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know what?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just get in on the other side of this, everything's gonna be just fine.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: If I just respond and do it, everything's gonna be fine.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I just get it over with, it's gonna be fine.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I think just that that kind of attack-to-day mentality, um, the cold plunge and actually doing it every single morning is is what I mean by that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can relate.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't do cold plunging, but there for a period long period of time in my life, I was doing triathlons and I we used to have training five o'clock in the morning at the gym in the pool.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you you you would wake up at 4:30, get in your car, drive to the pool, so you're still half awake, and then you gotta jump in the pool and just start exerting yourself, you know, because swimming for me did not come naturally, so it's one of the hardest things I've ever done.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And just that feeling of jumping into the because any water is cold because your body temperature is 98.6.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So even if the pool temperature is 70 degrees, it's still cold.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So um, and then you've got to start exerting yourself.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand exactly what you mean about doing the hard things first, because once you're done with your workouts in the morning, you know, you're there's nothing you can't tackle for the rest of the day, really.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really why cold plunging is now, you know, it started off as very trending, you know, the past five years for recovery for athletes and that sort of thing.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you had a lot of big names and a lot of big celebrities that were promoting it, but I think now it's really sticking because it does have a lot of those recovery benefits, but there's now broadening the category of who actually cold plunges, right?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Five years ago it was your meat heads, your your recovery people, your athletes, right?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was kind of the only category of people that were would be willing to get into cold water willingly, you know, for several minutes of the day.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're broadening that category to moms, dads, CEOs, entrepreneurs, people who are just trying to get that little bit of an extra edge in life and really figure out what that is.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of people, cold plunging gives that extra edge that they need to just win the death.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually in a I saw it on a commercial last night, a television commercial last night with um I forget who's in the commercial, but uh it's a uh it was an ad for something, and and there were two guys in cold plunge bats.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh one guy was tra trying to take the ice out uh because it was too cold for him.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody dumped ice in to make it cold for him.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway, funny.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is kind of going a bit mainstream because yeah, you used to look at it, you would see Peyton Manning jumping in after a game, or you would see, you know, the the linemen jumping in after a game.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: But now, yeah, it's it's normal, regular people getting almost like having a hot tub in your backyard.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of where we see the industry going.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it does serve a bit of a different customer, but in terms of the physical, you know, kind of um thing that that might sit sit or live, it's almost like an appliance, right, in someone's backyard.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be uh exploding.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we get contacted every day by different architectural firms, construction firms, builders that are doing these big condo buildings down here where we live in South Florida, right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they want to put them in every single unit, you know, out on the balcony or in the bathrooms or in the wellness rooms now that are very popular.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's now just it's really broadened um to more of that wellness category instead of just, you know, like I said, the athletes or whatever the case may have been five, 10 years ago.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I could see that.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I can also see the women getting involved because my wife would be like that.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I can't buy anything for the house that I doesn't get approval from uh from my wife.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter whether it's inside or outside, everything.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Bush it goes from bushes to uh to furniture.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's true, it's true, which is at our core you know, principle of how we approach product is it it does um we always say it has it has to be beautiful first, um, and it does have to function, but we don't want to put out anything that doesn't um just strike an eye.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: You look at it, I mean we get compliments on it every day, but it uh it just looks uh it has a bold presence to it, and it doesn't look like this kind of bulky hot tub, you know, old school bathtub thing.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like this kind of striking um object.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, wow, what is that thing?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you find out it's a cold plant, wow, that thing is is is beautiful.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: That thing's badass.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You uh you certainly need it to look good because or else the women aren't gonna buy into it.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I got a buddy up the street who uh who put in a hot tub without asking his wife.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: It just got delivered and he put it in.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And man, she is not a happy camper and he catches grief for it that's a bad idea.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's a bad idea.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, not to segue into it, but I will say your wife is definitely not gonna be upset at you if you put in a good shower head.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um most of all the compliments that we get these days is actually was a really big hit for Valentine's Day for for boyfriends and husbands to get the shower head for their wives as a uh Valentine's Day gift because the wives love it, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's great for their hair, their skin, uh, the way they feel, it's very refreshing, and it still looks beautiful, comes in all the different colors.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh most wives are extremely grateful for the shower head ones.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: The cold plunges are, yeah, I think you needed approval on that thing first.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the shower and the shower heads and all that.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we uh we redid all the bathrooms in our house, and I picked none of that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So my wife did.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have things that do all kinds of things that I mean we we don't even just have a normal um exhaust fan in the bathrooms.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: We have we have exhaust fans that you can play music through that have speakers in it.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that was all taken care of.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: The uh the shower heads, they do all kinds of things.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: They can make it rain and they can make it all kinds of nonsense.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's cold hypothesis matter.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really cool.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think it fits into, you know, we want to really um the reason why we came out with that product in general is because you know, our skin is the biggest gateway, right?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a barrier to everything.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so we live in a very toxic world, and so you can't really filter out air if you run around outside.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can filter the water you drink, right?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of people don't think about filtering the water that you're showering in.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it is our largest organ.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not like if you um were to have this water go onto your body, it doesn't just reflect off, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to stick one of your hands and stick it in a cup and actually let it sit there for about 30 seconds and you were taking a chlorine strip and you would have test that cup prior and before, prior, you would see a bunch of chlorine in it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: 30 seconds later, you take that same test, you would actually see zero chlorine in there, and that's because it just absorbed right into your skin.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's one of those things that is just it's not going anywhere, but into your body, which is just not good, right?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want chlorine being absorbed into your skin.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's what causes all the eczema, the the dry skin, the issues.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so, you know, we we we really want to, we really think that helping people and educating people on why that's not a good thing for your body and to your skin uh is a good thing.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So even like you for you mentioned, you know, oh, I don't want to change out this big, gorgeous shower head I got, whatever the case may be.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have products coming that you can kind of put in line, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't have to maybe change up uh the the singing shower head or the Bluetooth shower head or the light up shower head, whatever the case may be.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we understand that people are protective of those uh in certain cases.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, we have some products coming that will that will take care of that, and you can still filter the water.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree with you.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think filtering your water is uh it's essential to health.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll I'm a city boy.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in in the Bronx in New York, and you know, we never had uh, you know, we always had city water, and you know, nobody ever wanted to drink it, and you know, it was always you always thought it was the worst.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And when we moved into where we live now, it's the first time in my life that we had a well.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I never grew up with a well, so I have no idea.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we also have a septic system because we live, you know, in the woods essentially.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh five miles from downtown, but we're in the woods.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, um I thought to myself, there's just no way I want the water that's in the ground coming to me onto my body, you know, and we have a pool and you know, we have all this stuff, and it just didn't make sense.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I got this I got this massive filtration system for the house because and it makes a difference because you notice um you notice that the water, I I can't explain it, but it feels differently.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel like um, I don't know.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: It just it feels different.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel like it's yeah, a little bit softer, a little bit more refreshing.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, there's a lot of people who who have home health, you know, systems like you just mentioned, which I'm a huge proponent of.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can afford it, I would say go for it every day of the week.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we were just over at Gary Brecka's place yesterday doing some recording and some filming, and he's you know one of the biggest biohackers and health education people right now in the space.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he lives at the top of a condo building here in South Florida and very common for condo buildings.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: But for con for condo buildings, if you want to um filter your own water at your unit, you're still filtering um really what's coming in from the building.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though you are filtering the water, technically you can actually only filter the cold water because the hot water at most buildings is actually done on the bottom.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I'd have to put these boilers at every single level.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a big boiler on the bottom that it pushes up.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the problem with that is you can't actually put a filtration level on those hot waters unless you were to do it for the entire building.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so, you know, even for a lot of instances like that where you may not be filtering your hot water wine, um, you know, it's still very helpful to put one of these filters on there.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I always talk about putting it at the source, just like any kind of, you know, logic would assume you're putting it right before it touches your body.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so therefore, you're really getting out anything that might be stuck in the pipes or the rust or whatever the case may be, because stuff just lives there.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your water just sits in these pipes for years and years and years.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then and then it comes down.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even looking at this video I saw at Gary's place where he has this huge water filtration system.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's it's a pretty large unit with a lot of water going in and out.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they did like a backfill where they basically drained out everything after a few months to clean out the system and the whatever.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my gosh, this is after it was filtered, but just absolutely disgusting.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you if people knew that they were like showering in that water, it would be detrimental.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody would shower in that water, nobody would do it.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's because it's cumulative, and we talk about that a lot.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, showering in some tap water is not going to kill you, it's not gonna give you cancer today.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: But doing it consecutively and cumulatively over time is really where it starts to add up.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all these toxins just continuously going, going, going, going, going, going into your body.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of filtering it, we become the filter, right?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our hearts, our lungs, our skin cells, everything, we become that filter.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore eventually just starts to degrade, you know, over time.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so finding products, not just like our shower head, that will help filter out things like all these toxins and chemicals, these chlorines, these harsh, harsh chemicals that are coming into your body, um, but also looking for other areas where you can filter, you know, whether it be air, air filtration, you know, obviously staying away from from drinking tap water, um, you know, these are things that cumulatively over time do add up to really degrading eating at your house.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's my core belief as you see it a lot now with all these different health diseases across the country.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's it's a lot to do with the environment that we live in.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you just were to eat how eat healthy, do the right things, filter your water, filter your air, like you would be 95% ahead of all these, you know, biohackers that are, you know, sucking down peptides every second.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, you're doing that, but you know, you're not eating clean, you're not, you're not, you know, filtering your water, you're not filtering your air.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And these are things that have real impact on your health over over the long um, I I agree.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the first time I looked at the filters when they pulled them out after we uh installed a filtration system, I was I couldn't believe it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I even even with all that, I still have filters on every single uh faucet in every single room in the house, every single water room in the house.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh because it I mean it's amazing to me.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, one of the things that uh really made me put them on every single uh uh faucet was there's another house up the street.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know, you know, the guy's a friend of mine, and he said to me one day, he goes, How often do you change your appliances?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I said, What are you talking about?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, your washing machine, your dryer.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I I don't understand.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: What how often do I change them?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, we buy a washing machine, we run it until it breaks.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, 15 years, 10 years, I don't know how long.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to ask my wife, but he I said, you know, why?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I uh, you know, what do you do with all the dirt?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said, what are you talking about?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: He said he was scooping dirt out of his washing machine.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Don't you have a filtration system in your house?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yeah, I have a filtration system.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: He said, It's attached, it's going on the uh the well.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: But he was still getting all this dirt.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said, and his wife and his daughters were going to get their hair done and the people doing their hair kept pointing out all the things that were in their hair still.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was so I I was like, you know, even with a filtration system, he's got all this stuff going through.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And when you think about you think about the water where the water's coming in from, right?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: The water's coming in from the ground.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care who you are, the the water's coming in from the ground somewhere.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you're in a city and it's in a reservoir, that water still came out of the ground somewhere or the sky.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So now you're you're trying to believe that there's filtration of that water going through the system.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there may be, there may be not, but it can't be 100% effective.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: So when you start to look at what's in the water and all the minerals and all the things that are, you know, you're you're putting chemicals on your lawn, you're putting chemicals in on, you know, your your neighbors putting chemicals on the lawn.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I I 100% agree.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I we were in the skincare business early on many, many years ago.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, the whole premise was we we were in the natural, uh, it was actually raw.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we had read so many studies about what's on your skin, what goes into your skin, where it comes from, uh, just just in the ambient air.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then you start reading about people who get infections when they get cuts, and that's just coming off of their skin.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So 100% I agree with you.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you if you're looking at your health, you've got to look at the water that's going on your body, you've got to look at what you're putting in your body as far as food goes, what you're drinking, you know, how even uh drinking water.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't drink bottled water, I have a reverse osmosis system for drinking water.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just because so, you know, trying to get all those microplastics out.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, 100%.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: 100% is very important.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And touching on the on the business, you know, aspect of things, you know, when we went to go develop these shower heads and really decide that we want to enter this category, you know, we really looked at the category.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I pulled all the different products off the shelves, I ordered them all off Amazon, off their websites, and I did proper testing and I looked at are these filters doing anything?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: What are they removing?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, how long do they last?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's the efficacy of these filters, etc.?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that was honestly when we really decided to kind of jump, you know, full force in because I realized that most of the companies out there don't particularly do a lot of the real studies and really try to make these filters as effective as they need to be.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so I spent over$100,000 personally within our company on just the RD of our filter, not the molds, not the product, but just the RD of the filter, uh, finding the right proper materials to put inside of these filters and how long the actual filtration would last.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because most of the things that I discovered was that these companies were putting in kind of the same typical ingredients you would find when you go to a proper manufacturer and try to build one of these products.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: But after about a week, sometimes even less, you would actually find that the sampling would be doing almost nothing.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: You'd have virtually zero filtration because they just didn't have high quality ingredients going inside of these actual filters.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we set out there and said, could this be done?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Could we make something that actually lasted a very long time?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so we we we did that and we did all the right, you know, clinical testing and lab studies to put that filter through uh as much testing as we possibly could.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: We tested it to 10,000 gallons, which is you know much longer than what most people would typically have in a 90 day period.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we were still able to get over 85% of the chlorine out, as many as a lot of the other, you know, bad uh PFAs, uh heavy metals, et cetera, out of that water, which was a huge thing, you know, for us, was really hard to do in in this space.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And being partners with someone like Gary Brecca, you know, you can't really bring some a product to a Gary Brecca, that's not the absolute best of the best and has all the elite testing done to it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so we wanted to make sure that this product had the best of the best filtration to it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really our angle.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're becoming known for is becoming trusted in the water space, to where we put out a product you know and can trust.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is really backed by science.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's real labs.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: We post everything online.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: We don't hide anything.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can go right on there and click on the results and see it for yourself.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that level of transparency around the quality of the filters is really what's setting us apart from most of the competitors out there that are kind of just ordering it from, you know, some Chinese factory, not really doing any kind of QC on the ingredients and um unfortunately just not delivering the best results.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think people understand how bad things like chlorine are for your body.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it's a gas.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and you know, when it uh if if it if you were in a room and somebody put chlorine in the room, you would gag.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's horrible.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's horrible.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely terrible.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever walked into a storage room where they store chlorine, um, it's even when it's in boxes and it's in bottles and everything, it you walk into the room and you can immediately just you get a huge whiff of it.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's so bad.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when we bought this house, we it had a chlorine pool.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they had a shed just for the pool, and you know, it was all those chemicals in there, and I was like, I can't do this.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we transitioned it to a saline pool, which is better.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's better, but it's still not uh it's still not ideal.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, it's about as best as you're gonna get.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I do have a really good uh filtration on that because again, we live in the woods and all kinds of stuff winds up in the pool.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's important.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um just uh we're almost out of time, just to wrap it up and uh any any last minute kind of uh messages to to folks.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I love the American made part, you know.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh politics aside, I I love American made because I've always been a proponent, not again, politics aside, because the turnaround is so much better and I can I can react to things and I can have control over the manufacturing without having to spend two weeks flying somewhere to go and do it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I I love that part.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I I'm a um I'm a massive believer in in this country and the entrepreneurs that it breeds and the quality that it breeds.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think being able to manufacture here and actually having the opportunity to do that is is is an opportunity that I'm I'm I'm eternally grateful for because it's very difficult to do.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Most companies just don't have the opportunity to do so.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's extremely cost effective to do most things overseas.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we were fortunate enough to be in a business where I think, you know, we had to fight for it being here in America.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was certainly more cost effective to do overseas.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but there was an argument to be made that if we could pull it off, if we can make really high quality stuff, that people would be willing to pay a little bit more money to be able to get that extra bit of quality and trust out of an American-made product.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, we did we we made that decision pretty early on.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't start off with it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: We started off ordering the same chillers that most of our competitors were.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I ordered 150 chillers and about had a 65% failure rate with every single one of them, almost put us put us out of business.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: We had to go get personal loans and guarantees just to be able to fund new customers with new chillers.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And by the grace of God, you know, we got this chiller um out of an American manufacturer to market within about a year.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really what saved our company because after that, it was really just a really strong, reliable product from that point on.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, to message for anybody out there that's considering or looking or evaluating, or if you even have a slight chance of an opportunity to do something here in America, uh, there's a few things.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's the quality that you're gonna get, which is absolutely unmatched.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's one thing you mentioned, Phil, which is the speed, the speed and the rate at which you can actually adjust on the fly, fix things, do things.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's monumental and it's very different than being able to work with suppliers overseas, even if they're good ones.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just monumentally faster to be able to do things here.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there is just a level of quality control and perfection that goes into American craftsmanship that is just found nowhere else in the world.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's nobody out there that has the same level of mindset around quality because you also have to remember that America is an extremely um uh privileged, you know, state to be in.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have a mindset of spending in abundance around quality that many other countries just don't have from a mental standpoint.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're always trying to think about how do you shave sense off of something, um, which typically equates to shaving quality.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in America, we just don't think that way.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: We are truly thinking how do we properly make the best product for the consumer?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what has really turned into our our company and brand is what we're known for the most of is everything, you know, on our cold plunge lines is made right here in America, which has just been, like I said, an absolute um amazing opportunity to be a part of.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I agree.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so how do people find you?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you can check out um our brand, the cold life.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's our page, is the cold life.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: My personal page is Kyle Ponton, K-Y-L-E-P-O-N-T-O-N.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm most active on Instagram, um, as is the brand as well.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Instagram is typically the most preferred platform, but you can find us by those handles on any social media platform.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, man, I really appreciate you coming on and uh good luck.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: I really like what you're doing with the product and uh hopefully we keep in touch.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Bill.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you, man.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.