September 1, 2025 • 40 mins
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I spent the last month diving deep into the booming world of mobile saunas and cold plunges, and the numbers I found were wild. Operators are pulling in $10K to $50K/month with high margins and quick payback periods, and that’s not even the craziest part. In this episode, I break down 5 real businesses in this space and rank them from good to great, with real revenue numbers, strategies, and mistakes to avoid. Then I sit down with Danny Geurink from Purely Nomadic Sauna Co. in Michigan, who’s running a one-man sauna business with 50% profit margins and some brilliant insights on customer acquisition, pricing, and operational efficiency. We talk about everything from Facebook Marketplace tactics to why wood-burning saunas win, and how he’s doing this business with his family on the side. Whether you're curious about cold plunges or looking for a seasonal business with serious upside, this one’s for you.Danny’s business: http://purelynomadicsauna.com/🧠 My 45-min Facebook Ads guide [YouTube]: https://youtu.be/uUlU5G1Nda0📺 Watch my interview with Sam from DripSauna (Ep. 84) [YouTube]: https://youtu.be/MFIzgoI5WLE
Enjoy!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What if I told you that there's a business where people
literally pay you to torture themselves and they're freaking
addicted to it? I spent the last month diving
deep into the mobile sauna and cold plunge industry and guys,
the numbers are kind of nuts here.
Why did I look into this industry?
Because I emailed my newsletter 30 Business Ideas and this one
came in as number one that you wanted to learn about.
(00:20):
So here we are. I'm talking about operators
pulling 10 to $50,000 a month with 50% gross profit margins.
And some are hitting break even in only 75 days.
Now why is this happening? Well, the cold plunge market hit
$318 million two years ago and is projected to hit half a
billion dollars by 2030. And the crazy part is that
(00:41):
search volume for cold plunge and sauna keywords increased
370% over the last couple years.People are Googling this stuff
like it's going out of business.Today I'm going to break down 5
real operators. Real businesses with their
numbers, tactics, failures. Who's crushing it in the space?
How are they making money? Who has a physical location?
Who is only mobile? Is the bigger trend in saunas or
(01:04):
cold plunges are both together? At the end of this, I'm
interviewing a guy in Michigan who's expecting all of his
equipment to be paid off within under a year with 50% margins.
I'm going to profile a gym partnership in Texas hitting 130
recurring members in less than ayear, and a business owner in
Maine that serves over 12,000 people a year.
By the end of this video, you'regoing to know exactly how to
(01:25):
enter this market, what equipment to buy, how to find
customers, and most importantly,how to avoid the mistakes that
cost these guys 10s of thousandsof dollars.
I wanted to look at 5 different business models in this space so
you could compare and contrast which ones you like or prefer.
And I'm going to break down all 5 and rank them from 5:00 to
1:00. And I like #1 so, so much, I
went ahead and interviewed the guy at the end of this.
(01:46):
What's his pricing strategy? What are his equipment regrets?
Why did he choose wood burning over electric?
You're not going to learn this stuff anywhere else.
So let's get started. All right, in 5th place is
Denver Mobile Sauna. This is Denver Mobile Sauna run
by a guy named Micah. Now, I'm only ranking this
business 5th because the competition is so high between
(02:08):
these five businesses that I'm profiling.
There's nothing wrong with this business.
Denver Mobile Sauna is a mobile sauna and cold plunge business
outside of Denver, which is the same type of business that my
number one on this list has. But I'll get into why I prefer
that business in a little bit. So just to set the stage, they
have mobile sauna and cold plunge units that they drive
around, drop off and rent out. Here's how their pricing works.
(02:30):
300 bucks for two hours, 450 bucks for four hours, 525 for 8,
or $600.00 for an overnight rental.
And for an extra $200 you can rent for the whole weekend.
So the math here is straightforward.
If you're doing just 10 rentals a month at an average of $450,
then you're looking at $4500 in monthly revenue.
But your costs are minimal. It's basically just your time
(02:51):
and your labor and a little bit of gas.
You do have to maintain the equipment and pay for insurance,
but those costs are very minimal.
I like the idea of charging bothper hour per day and per weekend
because this is called price anchoring.
Someone goes to the website withthe intent to book it per hour
and they see that they can pay just a little bit more to book
it for the weekend. About 70% of the time they're
(03:12):
going to go with that option. He's going to spend the same
amount of time and money and work picking that thing up and
dropping it off, whether they rent it for two hours or two
days. So you might as well juice a
little more revenue out of it. And the interesting part is that
he's not just doing drop offs. He's partnering with Wellness
Studios for pop up events. That's one thing that's unique
to this business that I didn't see in a lot of others.
(03:32):
This creates A recurring revenuestream without having the
overhead of a physical location.And the beauty of this model is
that you can start it as a side hustle.
You don't have to quit your fulltime job.
If you do 2 to 3 rentals on the weekends, then you're making an
extra 1 to $2000 a month just from weekends.
OK, 4th place is Cedar Grove Sauna.
This owner turned a side hustle into an empire.
(03:53):
Jackie Stratton up in Maine owned Cedar Grove Sauna and she
is a freaking legend. Here's why.
She started this business in 2020 as just a side hustle.
Looking for some offseason cash if you will.
Fast forward a few years and she's serving 8 to 12,000 people
per year. Let me repeat that, 12,000
people per year. And what blew my mind about this
is her operation. She only burns through 10 cords
(04:16):
of wood annually. And now 1 quart of wood is about
half of a truck bed full. And depending on the market
you're in, a quart of wood is going to cost you between 400
and $900. So right off the bat, we know
that her yearly would cost, which is her only real cost of
goods sold, is going to be between $409,000.
She has eight staff members and she operates 2 fixed locations
(04:39):
plus one mobile unit. Now, the reason I ranked her
above Denver Mobile Saunas is because she's hedging your bets.
Having a physical location sendsa signal to the market that
you're here to stay, that you'repermanent, and maybe that you're
a little more expensive. It's like when I used to operate
iPhone repair stores, I could charge much more at my stores
that were fixed in a shopping mall next to a McDonald's as
(05:01):
opposed to my locations that were just a mall kiosk or in an
airport because my customers hadno clue if I was actually going
to be there a month later if they had a warranty claim to
file. Don't underestimate the signal
that this real physical fix location sends to the market and
how much it helps you stand out from your mobile only
competitors. Now, Jackie's mobile unit
rotates weekly to different locations across New England,
(05:25):
and the brilliant part about it is that she's built an e-mail
list of sauna aficionados. These are people that literally
plan their summer Tuesdays around her events.
She's created a community, not just a business.
And I've noticed that she's so committed to authenticity that
she takes international study trips to Finland, Lithuania,
Latvia and Sweden. She's not just running a sauna
(05:45):
business for some extra cash. She's become the sauna expert in
her local market. And that also sends a signal
that you're a premium option andthat you know what you're
talking about. So what started as just a COVID
era side hustle has transformed into a full time operation
because her demand was overwhelming.
That's the power of starting small and letting customer
(06:05):
demand pull you forward. It's kind of like when Crumble
launched. I read so many articles that
talked about the thousands of cookie recipes that they tested
and how they took all of their learnings from Silicon Valley
and from building tech products and put it into the cookie
business. That story sells.
Believe it or not, that story enabled them to sell more
cookies when you might think on the surface that they're not
(06:26):
interrelated at all. So when it comes to Jackie's
business up in Maine, my key take away is that community
beats competition every single time.
She's not just selling sauna time.
This is not just a commodity, not just a way for her to make
some extra money. She sold the whole experience,
became an expert in it and builta tribe around it.
OK, third place, Chill Wagon Wellness.
(06:48):
And I love that among these fivebusinesses that I'm ranking,
we're hitting all pockets of theUnited States, not just the cold
markets for the saunas or the hot markets for the cold
plunges. This model works anywhere and
everywhere, so chill wagon Wellness.
I call these guys the Young Guns.
Vincent and Brock down in Arizona, 22 years old, doing
(07:08):
over $60,000 in monthly revenue.Here's exactly how they're doing
it. Their revenue model is private
bookings, 350 to $500.00 for a 2hour minimum.
Then they do events where they set up their units at festivals
and farmers markets and charge 35 to $45 per person just for
one quick session. Then they even do corporate jobs
(07:29):
where they come into companies and charge $1500 for 1/2 day
where all of the employees can use the units for free.
Their operational cost per eventare only 30 to $60.00 which is
just ice and gas. Here's what their setup looks
like. It's a custom trailer that has 2
cold plunges with jets and a sauna for five people,
compression boots, synthetic turf, and a really clean layout.
(07:52):
But what makes them brilliant isnot their trailer, it's the fact
that they're not just offering sauna and cold plunges.
They created a whole experience around this that's called plunge
dot sweat dot coffee. It's a branded event that's
basically workout, then cold plunge, then sauna, then a
coffee social. What's brilliant about this is
the increased surface area. You're casting a wider net.
(08:15):
Maybe some of these people have no interest in a sauna or a cold
plunge, they just want some coffee and hang out with their
friends. Maybe some of these people just
love cold plunges, don't even drink coffee, but they're going
to go for the cold plunge. It provides endless upsell
opportunities, endless surface area and enables you to capture
those customers that intend to come for a one time experience
and to sell them on recurring experience as well.
(08:37):
But their business to business strategy is where they really
shine. Here they partnered with another
local business called Burn Boot Camp and a few other local gyms
and the gym owners love these guys because it elevates the
entire event. It's kind of like having a Great
Clips inside a Walmart. It's a symbiotic relationship.
You go to get your hair cut. You know what, you might as well
pick up a watermelon. You go to pick up a watermelon
(08:58):
and hey, I need a haircut. It's Co marketing.
These are businesses that don't compete with each other, but
they're attracting the same typeof customer, someone concerned
about their health. And it enables the business
owners to position themselves asArizona's premier Wellness
concierge and not just a mobile sauna.
And now that I think about it, Denver mobile sauna was #5
(09:18):
because they weren't really doing any of these cool special
things. They weren't doing the hard
things. Remember, the harder way is
usually the better way. Coordinating events, calling
other business owners, forming partnerships.
That's as hard, and there are risks associated with it, but
that's what helps you stand out.Surely it's not cheap for Jackie
up in Maine to fly to Finland tolearn more about how saunas
(09:38):
work. And you're not going to see an
immediate return on investment with stuff like that.
But over the long run, if you'rewilling to play the long game,
it pays dividends, all right. Now, these guys in Arizona, they
spent 3500 bucks on Facebook adsand generated 80% of leads from
that ad spend. And I would bet that of the
remaining 20%, a lot of it came from that ad spend as well.
But it just happened organically.
(10:00):
For instance, you see a paid ad and you share it with a friend
depending on what your attribution looks like.
In other words, depending on howgranularly you're looking at
that data from Facebook, you mayor may not capture that
additional organic customer thatcame from your paid ad.
And these guys are focusing on business owner testimonials over
just individual reviews. And this is because their
(10:21):
business to business strategy isfirst and foremost, and business
owners trust other business owners more than they trust
individual consumer reviews. So they really, really put a lot
of effort into trying to get testimonials, case studies and
reviews from business owners that they're partnering with
other gyms, corporate events, festivals, etcetera.
These guys also have a huge location advantage.
(10:44):
Scottsdale and Phoenix is a wealthy demographic that has
year round demand for cold plunges because it's freaking
hot. It has a fitness success culture
and when they launched, somehow they had zero competition.
They've since added mobile IV therapy for additional revenue
streams. That's going to be a whole other
video. And I love that these 22 year
olds really understand that in the Wellness space, the money
(11:05):
comes from stacking services to maximize your RPC revenue per
customer. Med spas do this really well as
well. OK, time for #2 This guy's name
is Sam. He has a business down in
Cleburne, TX, about an hour fromme.
I interviewed him on my podcast a year ago.
It was episode 84 on audio, cameout on October 28th, 2024, or on
(11:27):
YouTube. You could see that interview in
the show notes below. Now, this business is called
Drips on a.co, and I promise they're not ranked #2 just
because I interviewed the owner and I know more about it.
It's because of the piggyback method, which I'll get to in a
minute. So the owner of Drips Sauna Sam,
is a guy that's a lot like me. He's distracted.
He's launching all kinds of different businesses.
He had a fencing business that did well, and then he's like,
(11:49):
let's try something else. Then he started installing stock
tanks, which looks something like this.
You buy it at Tractor Supply for500 bucks.
He installed some pool equipmentfrom Amazon that cost 1 or 200
bucks, graded the land, put it down, charged 3 to $5000, grew
it with Facebook ads. It's kind of like a kiddie pool,
but nicer and also for millennials.
(12:09):
And it's just a way to cool downin the hot Texas heat.
He started that business and crushed it and is still crushing
it, still growing it. That's a whole other episode as
well. But then he started thinking
about the contrast therapy business, which is what we're
talking about. Cold plunged to sauna, sauna to
cold plunge back and forth, all kinds of health benefits, yadda,
yadda, yadda. But he thought, I only want to
launch this if I can piggyback on another business and
(12:31):
immediately tap into their customer base.
So he gets a couple business partners and he starts looking
around, is there a gym? Is there some sort of a business
that I can put this inside of? Because you don't need a big
footprint and just immediately start tapping into their
customer base. Kind of like that Walmart Great
Clips example I just gave. And they came up with this idea
because they went to a bachelor party in Louisiana.
They woke up with hangovers and they went and did contrast
(12:53):
therapy. And that was their light bulb
moment. We need to bring this to Texas.
But here's where it gets brilliant.
They spent two years trying to find the right stand alone
location. Then Sam went to the gym.
One day he saw a picture of someunused space, sent it out to his
business partners and said hey, what if we just see if we can
use this space? It was about two bedrooms worth
of space. So we talked to the manager.
(13:14):
The manager said this could be interesting.
They worked out a deal and Sam started with four infrared
saunas that cost 7 to $8000 each.
All of these can be financed. He bought 2 Colt Plunges at
$10,000 each and he paid $2000 amonth to the gym to rent the
space. Now it's positioned in the
perfect spot. You walk into the gym, you get
checked in, you start going to the equipment, and you walk
(13:34):
right by this space. Within a few months they had 130
monthly recurring members that were paying them $75.00 a month
for unlimited usage of their units.
That's a 45 minute session. Or if they wanted to accommodate
walk in customers, they just charged 30 bucks per session.
In case you're not doing the math, that's over $10,000 a
monthly recurring revenue and they broke even in under a year,
(13:58):
including paying off all their equipment.
They're one regret they didn't install drains underneath the
cold plunges because swapping out the water is kind of a pain.
So if you're going to do this, install a drain.
Their competitors are charging over twice that same amount, 150
to 175 a month for the same exact equipment.
And it's more inconvenient for the customers because now they
(14:20):
have to go to the gym and then they have to drive to the
contrast therapy place. They are a one stop shop and
less than half the price. And their rent is even cheaper
than their competitors as well. Same equipment, half price, more
convenient for everyone. Win win win.
And if some of his customers want to bring the cold plunge to
them, he will install a stock tank at their house.
(14:41):
And that's a very unique setup, makes around $1500 profit per
job on those stock tank installations.
And he finds almost all of his customers from Facebook ads.
And any time you're an entrepreneurship, you always
want to offset the reliable recurring stuff with the one
hit, the higher ticket offerings.
The Sonic Whole plunge business brings in monthly recurring
revenue. The stock tank installation
(15:03):
business brings in thousands of dollars at a time.
And it's just nice because beingan entrepreneur is extremely
volatile, income is extremely lumpy, and it's nice to be able
to smooth that out a little bit.This one's number 2 because of
the gym partnership. He's got a built in customer
base on day one. There's natural cross promotion
opportunities. The gym shares their e-mail list
(15:24):
with him. He doesn't need any marketing
because the foot traffic is the marketing.
And I always like to say in any retail business, you can either
pick the best location or you can pick an OK location and
spend a lot more money in marketing.
Your location is your marketing.Now here are the tactics that
Sam uses to acquire customers. He makes this first session
free. This creates an addiction.
(15:46):
People love how they feel afterwards.
He offers both private and public cold plunges.
Private for introverts, public for the social content for the
extroverts. That's also a built in viral
marketing tactic. And it's just a great business.
So time for #1 purely nomadic sauna up in Grand Rapids in
Michigan, home of the Universityof Michigan.
This is Danny. I spent an hour talking to him
(16:08):
last month and I just love the way he did things from the
start. He started with one unit, he
paid $22,000 for it, and then headded a second unit for $10,000
once he had enough demand for that.
He's forecasting a full payback of all of this money within 12
to 18 months with 50% profit margins.
This business is great for him because he also has a home
inspection business and it helpsoffset that income.
(16:30):
And one kind of intangible that I love about this business is
that Danny gets his four kids involved to teach
entrepreneurship to his family. And as a father of four kids, I
completely endorse that. He also noticed that his
customers have more demand for awood burning authentic
experience. Remember, when it comes to a
sauna, you can do infrared, you can do electric sauna, and you
can do wood burning sauna. Now, of course, wood burning is
(16:52):
a little harder. You got to supply the wood that
comes out of your cost. If you use pine, it's going to
burn quickly. You want to use oak because it's
more dense, but it's also more expensive and heavier to carry
around. But Danny says it is well worth
it. He finds his customers on
Facebook Marketplace. That's it, Not boosted posts,
not paid ads, just organic free posting.
(17:12):
The Facebook marketplace and hispricing, 350 per day, 650 per
weekend, which is Friday eveningto Monday morning or 1200 for a
full week. His biggest business is Sonos,
but people can pay a little extra to add on a cold plunge,
which is just an inflatable tub that cost I think a few $100.
Now I really love the way Danny did this because his other
(17:33):
business, Home Inspection, is kind of seasonal, so this
business offsets that seasonality.
So if you have or want a seasonal business, the best way
to combat that seasonality is toadd another seasonal business to
the other seasons. My friend owns a bunch of
pressure washing businesses and he says the best thing a
pressure washing business can dois to start a Christmas light
installation business. If he could do it all over
(17:54):
again, he would have bought his second unit first because the
second unit was cheaper and it'sa lot lighter because it's an
aluminum cedar hybrid. It weighs about half as much and
you can move it by hand. Another thing I love about his
story is that he was the first mover in Grand Rapids, much like
the guys in Scottsdale. Do a simple scrape on Outscraper
or just do a simple Google search on Google Maps and see if
(18:15):
you have competitors within an hour of you.
Now I'm just going to sound likean eternal optimist here, but
whether you have a lot of competitors or no competitors,
either one could be good. A lot of competitors could
signal a lot of market awareness.
A lot of people looking for thisservice, a lot of opportunity to
stand out and be better. No competitors means less market
awareness and not a lot of people could be searching for
(18:36):
it. But if you can educate the
market a little bit, you can be first because surely eventually
there will be other competitors.Why not be first?
Now, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty about
insurance cost, towing capacity,what is cash cows are other
customer acquisition strategies where he finds his wood, where
he finds operational efficiencies, how he partners
(18:56):
with wedding parties, birthday parties, events.
Check out my interview with him right at the end of this
episode. All right, key takeaways from
all five of these businesses, Facebook ads, Facebook ads,
Facebook ads, Facebook ads. They're driving 60 to 80% of
leads across multiple operators.And the great thing about
Facebook ads is that you can start with just a Facebook
Marketplace post. If you've got demand on Facebook
Marketplace, then you'll have even more demand if you boost
(19:18):
that Facebook Marketplace post. And then you'll have even more
demand if you're willing to do proper Facebook ads.
Also, I made a 45 minute video called Facebook Ads Guide for
Noobs that's in the show notes as well.
Of these five businesses, the ones that are doing the best are
partnering. They're partnering with existing
businesses that have the same customer base.
Gyms, Wellness studios, Airbnb's.
(19:38):
Make your first session free. Get testimonials from business
owners, not just from consumers.Offer tiered pricing.
Just like the popcorn at the movie theaters.
You're probably going to go for the biggest one because there's
only $0.79 extra. The same principle applies here
also. When you book these corporate
events, it's a lot more surface area.
Every single employee that uses your unit on their employer's
(20:00):
dime might become a customer of yours on an individual level.
You're not selling cold plunges.You're not selling saunas.
You're selling longevity. You're selling an experience.
You're selling doing hard things.
You're selling that feeling thatpeople get when they come out of
these things. You're selling the sizzle, not
the steak. Do not underestimate location.
Ever. Never underestimate location,
(20:22):
whether that's physical locationor digital location of where
you're advertising your business.
It's everything. This industry is still in the
education phase, but you will beriding a tidal wave.
We're still very early. We'll probably still be early in
three to five years. That means you got to be
patient. Probably helps if you have a
love for this thing as a user ofsaunas or cold lunches, it'll
help this business or side us will be more sustainable for
(20:44):
you. All right, without further ado,
please hear from Danny directly of Nomadic Saunas up in
Michigan. Share this with a friend that
might want to start this business.
And thanks for hanging out on the Kerner office.
OK, so you start cold plunging literally in a lake by cutting
out the ice. You're into it.
Your wife's not. Then you're like, all right, to
get the full benefits, we got todo sauna and cold plunge.
You get an infrared sauna. You don't like it so much, you
(21:06):
build a real sauna, you like it.And then at that point, because
your, your brain works kind of like mine, it's like, all right,
how do I monetize this? Actually, when I built the cold
plunge in the backyard, my wife was like, oh, well, if you're
going to do this crazy thing, I'll do it with you.
So she actually jumped pretty quickly, jumped on board and
really enjoyed it. So yeah, so I started looking at
what it would cost to build 1. And I was like, the cost, the
time, I don't know if I can do that.
(21:26):
And then I saw a guy over in theMinnesota post, hey, I got 3
saunas. I'm switching kind of how I do
my business. I'm selling them, Here's the
pricing. And I looked at them and I was
like, yeah. And I started doing the math in
my head and I'm like, I can't build them for the amount of
time. And I started thinking of like,
OK, I'm taking time away from myother, from my home inspection
business. I'm like I can't do it for
(21:47):
cheaper than this. And this is for a mobile sauna
specifically. Correct, correct.
What was the price? I bought 2 of them actually from
him. One was here over 20 grand.
The other one was there under 10grand.
I originally wanted one, kind ofreached out, said hey, so he
shot me some videos, gave me some details and I was like,
hey, yeah, I got to do this. So we talked about it, reached
(22:09):
out, said, you know, so I drove out there, picked it up.
When I was out there, I was looking at kind of the other two
he had for sale and I was like, yeah, maybe if, you know, things
go good, we can at some point dosomething and.
If you have one rental unit of any in any business, you rent it
out and you're done. You can't rent it out again,
Right. So that's probably what you're
thinking. You're optimistic.
You're like, yeah, I don't know,I'm feeling pretty good about
this. Like, I'm going to buy one,
(22:30):
might as well buy two. Yeah.
Yeah, so I get back and start using it.
And part of the thing was like, hey, I never had a wood, wood
burning 1. So it's going to take me some
time to figure this out. I love sauna.
Like, hey, so almost every nightwe're cranking up the sauna.
I just parked at my friend, my driveway neighbors were coming
over. I'm just kind of doing a little
community, you know, community sauna.
(22:50):
So yeah, I just kind of enjoyingit, figuring out the little
quirks. And, you know, I think what I've
realized through one of my favorite things about business
and starting businesses is figuring out the process and
then kind of creating efficiencies around the process.
And so it's like, OK, how can I make this process the most
efficient? I mean, I got to kind of try it
and figure it out and make mistakes and yeah, just have fun
(23:13):
with it. So I can kind of do that.
So I started doing that. My wife is a designer, so she
started doing some of the working on some of the back end
design. We started the website and you
know, one of the things, obviously the sauna doesn't have
too many consumables other than wood.
I mean, that's obviously the biggest expense, if you will.
And my parents, they live on a farm and they have access to a
(23:34):
lot of free wood. Yeah.
So when it comes to the wood, isthere like an authentic sauna
that doesn't need wood necessarily or if you're going
to start a business in this likeyou kind of need an authentic
sauna that's. So you can do, you can do
electric, there are electric saunas where you can get like
steam and it can feel very close.
(23:54):
The problem with that is, well, how are you going to guarantee
that there's the correct power source on site?
I mean, with electric vehicles, people do have a lot more
304050AMP plugs in the garage, but I mean, at least here in
West Michigan, most people don'thave that.
So you know. OK, do I drag a generator along?
Then you got to SO. The wood burning is critical for
(24:16):
the rental aspect because of thepower issue.
Because of the mobile and the power.
Yeah, yeah. Whereas if this were a fixed at
someone's home, then it would burning is not as important.
No, no. Then you could easily do the
electric and still get. With some of the nicer electric
ones you can definitely get a lot more.
Is it the full real experience as an electric one?
Like if I wanted one of my house, would I be OK with
(24:37):
electric or is it kind of not fully authentic or effective?
There's something about the nostalgia of just like, actually
feeding a firewood. I mean, I'm kind of a pyro.
I'm a. Pyro.
So I get it. So it's like there's something,
there's something about that youcan put it at a, you know, on
your driveway in the city. You can take it out to your lake
house. You can take it out to the
(24:57):
woods. You know, it's like, yeah, that
you can have in a lot different,different areas.
The guy in Minnesota who I bought them from, he had
actually worked out a deal with the Minnesota parks where he had
it parked at one of their like boat launches.
So he kind of feed them some of the proceeds as a fee to have it
there. And then he's kind of going more
instead of like, so the way I dothings is it's more of either a
(25:20):
weekend or a week, week long rental.
So I bring it out, drop it off, give you all the woods, teach
you how to use it, and then comeback and pick it up.
So when you go out to see these,you end up buying two of them
then? So I bought the first one, drove
that home. It was probably a couple months
later he texted me and goes, hey, I got somebody interested
in the other one. I've already done business with
(25:40):
you. I know you kind of mentioned you
were interested. If you want it, I'll give you
kind of first dibs on it. OK, so you bring the thing home.
When does the mobile cold plungecome into it?
That's an interesting thing thatwe've been planned.
So I bought a couple of there's like the inflatable kind of like
the same like stand up paddle board material type cold
plunges. So I've picked up a couple of
(26:00):
those and what I'm realizing is like, man, unless you have a
chiller in the summertime in Michigan, it's hard to keep that
water cold. So our goal or our idea is to
just kind of stick with those inflatable tubs, bring those
along. You can fill them up, put ice in
there, leave it outside in the cold.
It's not a higher ticket rental item, but it's just one of those
(26:21):
add-ons where, yeah, most peopledo want to do that kind of
contrast therapy. What I've seen a lot of other
kind of sauna businesses do is they do kind of like an outdoor
shower type deal. You hook the hose up to it, kind
of just either have like a pull string or something, we can turn
it on. You know, I get that cold water
and get back in the sauna. So there's a couple different
(26:41):
options for doing that and yeah.OK.
So are you're not always rentingout both together?
You rent out that them out individually as well or they
always go together? The saunas are the ones we
mainly rent out and then the cold plunges that kind of an add
on, if you will to the to the sauna.
So you never, Yeah, you don't rent out the cold plunge by
itself? No, you primarily rent out the
sauna. And sometimes people pay extra
(27:02):
for the. Cold.
The cold lunge. Yep, correct.
And it's just like, it's just the inflatable ones with the
chiller on it, correct? How much do those cost?
The flavor ones are just a couple 100 bucks.
Those are pretty. Oh wow, pretty cheap and they're
pretty. Good.
If you want a chiller then they're, you know, they're
anywhere from 1000 to, you know,a couple 1000 bucks.
So let's go back to when you first buy the sauna, you bring
(27:23):
it back home. What does the business look like
those first 30 days? What do you do first, Rick, when
you start the website, when you start marketing, how do you
market all that? Yeah.
I think I kind of took the approach that I did when I
started my home inspection business was I want to build a
good digital kind of foundation.I've seen how Google how getting
in early is important and pays dividends in the long run.
(27:46):
Here in Grand Rapids. I don't know of any other mobile
sauna rental companies. There's a couple on the
outskirts kind of outside of Grand Rapids in West Michigan
area, one up in Rockford and kind of over by the Lakeshore.
But my thought was, OK, I want to get in early and even if I'm
not running this thing full force, I at least want to start
laying that foundation. So getting the Google business,
(28:09):
trying to start getting reviews,trying to get the website up,
start putting pictures, start getting kind of all those things
that Google likes to see. So you do that first week or so.
Yep, first couple weeks doing that, we just, our daughter is
coming up on three months old. So it's been a little, it was a
little bit of a crazy time to decide to, to start a business,
(28:29):
but that's how life works out and you just got to roll with
it. But so one of the things we
decided to try was, hey, let's just throw this out on
Marketplace, you know, not really push it hard yet, but
just kind of get some rentals under our belt and kind of go
through the process. And so that's kind of what we
did throughout there. And like anything on
Marketplace, you get some, you know, random people taking tires
and then you get some people like, hey, I want it for this
(28:51):
weekend. And so got our first couple
rentals through that. Sorry, what did your Facebook
Marketplace post look like? Like you you post pictures of
the unit, How did you price it? Was it priced by the day, by the
week? And I imagine people were
probably on there looking to buyone that not even looking for
rentals and it just kind of popped up.
Correct, correct. So yeah, I just kind of, I put
the day price on the listing of hey, mobile sauna rental, 350
(29:15):
bucks. And then in the description
like, hey, there's a mobile sauna, here's some details,
here's my pricing for weekend week.
And then I put the website down there like, hey, if you want
more details, here's the website.
And that was kind of just a funnel to get people through to
the website. I use Squarespace.
They have the acuity scheduling,so I threw that up there.
Yeah, I actually got a couple rentals.
(29:35):
So 350 for a day and how much for a week?
It's 6:50 for a weekend, Friday evening to either Saturday
evening or Monday morning and then a week is 1200. 1200 Now
what does your average customer look like?
Is it a dad, a mom? A family?
A party? A group?
A business. This last one I had to a wedding
(29:56):
and the wedding day, the guys are like, well, I mean, the
girls are doing the makeup and all the, you know, the process
of getting ready. The guys were like, well, we
don't have much to do. So what are we going to do?
Like, oh, we'll rent a sauna andwe'll kind of hang out, get some
cool pictures and yeah, that we kind of kill some time, but also
not just be some trolling a thumb.
So I've had birthday party and alot of it is people interested
(30:19):
in kind of the health and Wellness and just people who
are, yeah, looking at kind of experiencing something
different. I've had at least one guy be
like, yeah, I want to build my own, but I wanted to kind of try
something out first before I, you know, before I start a three
month process of, yeah, buildinga sauna.
So. It's just surprising to me that
(30:40):
a wedding party would even thinkto do that, you know, Like, why
do you think they thought, let'srent a mobile sauna?
Like, is it the culture up therein Michigan or they're just
becoming more popular? It's not really West Michigan.
It's definitely not part of the culture here.
You go up to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan, and the
sauna culture is pretty strong up there.
(31:01):
One of the bigger colleges in Michigan, Northern Michigan, I
didn't get that info when I was talking to them.
They're like, Oh yeah, we've alldone sauna.
Like, you know, we've done electric in wood.
And so they were definitely somehow steeped in that culture.
But yeah, I think at this point,it's definitely mostly people
who have been around it and like, oh, yeah.
So we have a small group from church and we rent out about
(31:21):
this big kind of lake. It's during the winter or during
the summer. It's a summer camp during the
winter. They rented out just to anybody
who wants to use it. So we rent that out every
winter. And when we're out there, that's
kind of where I started cold plunging.
One of the guys was like, we gotto rent a mobile sauna and bring
it out here. And that's where I had kind of
first heard of that idea. Before that, I would have never,
you know, thought of of that you.
(31:43):
Decide how to price it for thosefirst couple jobs.
I kind of went off of just kind of what other saunas, you know,
the two other companies that were kind of semi close by kind
of what they were going for. And I had been kind of watching
their calendars through the lastlast winter to see, OK, what
availabilities do they have? How many weekends out are they
booked? And just kind of getting some of
(32:04):
that data of like, you know, andobviously not all of that could
be true. You know, sometimes they could
be, you know, have an event or doing something themselves, But
and then kind of basing it on that just to have kind of
similar, similar pricing to whatthey have.
And then, you know, and then theguy who I bought him from in, in
Minnesota, he kind of, you know,yeah, kind of went off of kind
of what he was doing too. And he was saying Minnesota, you
(32:25):
know, he started I think like 4-5 years ago and was one of the
1st. And now there's just, I mean,
there's a ton of mobile rental, mobile sauna rental companies in
Minnesota. So he said the market there's
definitely, definitely happened.You know, for me, it's like,
hey, having a couple other mobile sauna rental businesses
in the area is great because it it builds awareness that hey,
this is actually a thing that you can do when you're you're
(32:48):
the only one. It's yeah, you're, you're kind
of fighting upstream, but it's nice to have yeah, other people
kind of doing it too. So.
How did you get your jobs after that first wave of Facebook
Marketplace posts? So we're still kind of in that
in that first wave. I'm starting kind of looking at
this next wave. I'm think the research I've
done, you know, summertime, not a huge, not a huge market for
(33:12):
songs. You'll have the occasional guy,
the guy in Minnesota, he's like,yeah, I pretty much shut down
during the summer because this is a full time thing.
And he's like, yeah, I kind of shut down, spend time with my
family to, you know, do other things.
Just he's like the first two years I marketed, marketed,
marketed, couldn't really drop drum up enough stuff to make it
worth it. So he's like, if I get calls,
I'll still rent them out, but I'm not pursuing anything, not
(33:36):
really, you know, on the pavement.
And then he's like, but then, you know, come the beginning of
fall, once you start getting some cool evening, some cool
days, he's like, that's when it's just, yeah, when it really
takes off, so. How long have you been at this
business now? Three or four months.
So pretty wow. OK.
Yeah. All right.
So first month goes by, you get your first jobs, you like what
you see, then you decide to buy the second one, right?
(33:59):
Yes, Yep. OK.
And was that a good decision? Were you happy you did that?
Were you able to keep both rented at the same time at least
occasionally? So I haven't gotten to that
point yet. So I mean, at this point
financially is it was it a good decision?
We'll see. My big thing was with the amount
of interest there are in mobile saunas, I don't have any fear
(34:21):
that it Yeah, hey, if a year from now it's like I can't rent
this thing out, you know, yeah, there's I can definitely offload
it, but I don't I don't foresee having an issue.
I think one of the I've been kind of trying to play around
with, okay, what can I do offseason, right where I can,
you know, try to get these at least semi consistently booked
up. And one of the things I've
(34:41):
thought about is partnering withAirbnb or other short term
rentals where it's like, hey, you can have this kind of as an
add on, you know, when people are renting it out, it'll draw
attention to your listing. But then also, you know, a way
to partner, especially for, you know, we have a lot of lakes
here in West Michigan, Michigan.So, you know, a lot of those
lake, that's one of the things that I've kind of seen where
people are willing to do the sauna even when it's hot
(35:04):
outside, if they have a lake that they can just kind of go
and jump in and yeah. You really haven't even gone
through a full season. Then you bought the second one
to kind of prepare for the winter time.
To prepare for the winter, Yeah.Yeah.
One of my big things is kind of doing this as a family.
I want my kids to get that entrepreneurial bug.
I want them to see kind of the process of OK, what does it look
like? And OK, what you know, what are
(35:26):
the insurance and outs? And, you know, we're moving into
this new world with AI where, you know, that nine to five job,
you know, who knows what's goingto happen in that world?
And I think being able to know the process to to start a
business, to run a business, to operate a business and, you
know, to see some of the frustrations and some of the,
you know, just like, OK, like what does that look like?
(35:47):
And so, yeah, exposing my kids to that.
What other marketing channels have you tested to to get
bookings successfully? So those are the only ones I've
done so far. Just Facebook Marketplace.
Yep, Yep. I've had a couple events that
have kind of reached out. We just kind of weren't ready
for that like a fitness, there was a fitness week.
(36:08):
They're like, oh, can we set up the sauna?
And I was trying to do that, butjust kind of didn't, wasn't able
to get everything in place by then.
But yeah. So I think there's events like
that. I think long term events aren't
really my goal. I tried to guard my weekends and
evenings for family if I can. But I do know that that is one
of the avenues a lot of mobile sauna rental companies do is
(36:28):
what where they'll, you know, either park it at a Lake, Park
it in a lot to kind of a hey, wegot a one hour time slot, got 8
slots, you know, 30 bucks a person.
And then you just kind of have wave after wave and you're there
kind of managing the sauna. So I do know that is one of the
one of the ways people do that. You know, again, that is an
option to get things rolling. But again, the less weekend
(36:51):
evening work I can do, the better in my opinion.
When it comes to burning the wood in the sauna, do you need a
certain type of wood like hardwood?
Softwood does not really matter.If you get it up to 100 and
9200°, you definitely need a hardwood oak, Maple.
But oak, oak is the best, the easiest kind of the find around
here. You know, the drier it is, the
(37:12):
hotter it's going to burn. So yeah, So having seasoned
hardwoods is definitely key. The nice thing about the saunas
is though, they're very efficient at burning.
I thought that was one of the things that I was surprised by,
just the you throw a couple logsin there to get her going and
then you know, maybe one or two while you're saunaing and then
that's really it, so. What kind of towing capacity do
(37:34):
you need to pull one of these things?
So the first one I bought is a little bit beefier, it's £3500.
So you definitely need, you know, like a full size truck.
The second one I bought is actually it's a company I think
they're in a Minnesota, it's aluminum trailer, which is
pretty lightweight. And then they use, they frame it
with cedar like 2 by fours. And then the outside is a
(37:57):
thermoplastic. So it's kind of like a
translucent plastic. So it's super light.
So I can pick that one up, move it around kind of by hand at
first when I was like, yeah, this is a little I don't know.
But the more I use that one, I'mlike, who?
This is definitely the way to go.
And as far as the sizing goes, that one holds about as many as
you know as this bigger one. It just doesn't have a changing
(38:19):
room. So you know for certain, for
most situations that was just asgood.
What are you forecasting your payback period will be like once
the cold season starts? How quickly do you think you can
pay off your first unit? I think it'll take about a year,
year and a half. Insurance is, you know, it's not
cheap, but it's not expensive. It's nothing crazy.
It's couple 1000 bucks and then it's a year.
(38:41):
Yep. And that's an additional 500
persona after that first one. So from the amount of interest,
I'm already starting to kind of have some bookings out into
fall. So there's already kind of some,
some of that interest coming in.Again, definitely not running
this as my main source of income, but just having
something, you know, on the sides.
Again, just trying to kind of create separate revenue streams.
(39:02):
So I would think you've got likeover 50% net margins with this
business like your costs are your gas, your costs are the
insurance and then your time andwould, right.
Is there anything else I'm missing?
I mean, yeah, again, I have access to free wood, so it's not
a huge, you know, but it's more of the time of going out and
cutting it. And that is one thing I did hear
a lot from other business ownersis don't let people use their
(39:24):
own wood. Don't let people try to throw.
Yeah, yeah, throw their they. Can't control what they do with.
It they're old deck boards in there and then you're.
Yeah. So yeah.
What would you have done differently looking back with
this business? I mean nothing at this point.
I think the only thing is I might have.
I personally love this sauna that I'm in.
The bigger one as far as you know, business wise, I think the
(39:48):
other one makes more sense. Just as far as it's easy to tell
it's a weighs less. I can move it by hand.
I probably would have gone the other way, started with that
other one. And what was the price and size
difference between the two? So the first one was 20 like
21122 hundred something like that or 20. 2022 thousand.
(40:09):
Yeah, 22,000. And how big was it?
So it's got about AI think it's a 10 foot like hot room and then
it has like a four foot like changing room.
It has a solar powered battery for lights in the sauna and has
an outside loud light. It's a bigger stove, it's a
nicer stove. It looks a lot more kind of
(40:31):
classic sauna all. Right, what do you think?
Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on
the Kerner office.
What if I told you that there's a business where people
literally pay you to torture themselves and they're freaking
addicted to it? I spent the last month diving
deep into the mobile sauna and cold plunge industry and guys,
the numbers are kind of nuts here.
Why did I look into this industry?
Because I emailed my newsletter 30 Business Ideas and this one
came in as number one that you wanted to learn about.
(00:20):
So here we are. I'm talking about operators
pulling 10 to $50,000 a month with 50% gross profit margins.
And some are hitting break even in only 75 days.
Now why is this happening? Well, the cold plunge market hit
$318 million two years ago and is projected to hit half a
billion dollars by 2030. And the crazy part is that
(00:41):
search volume for cold plunge and sauna keywords increased
370% over the last couple years.People are Googling this stuff
like it's going out of business.Today I'm going to break down 5
real operators. Real businesses with their
numbers, tactics, failures. Who's crushing it in the space?
How are they making money? Who has a physical location?
Who is only mobile? Is the bigger trend in saunas or
(01:04):
cold plunges are both together? At the end of this, I'm
interviewing a guy in Michigan who's expecting all of his
equipment to be paid off within under a year with 50% margins.
I'm going to profile a gym partnership in Texas hitting 130
recurring members in less than ayear, and a business owner in
Maine that serves over 12,000 people a year.
By the end of this video, you'regoing to know exactly how to
(01:25):
enter this market, what equipment to buy, how to find
customers, and most importantly,how to avoid the mistakes that
cost these guys 10s of thousandsof dollars.
I wanted to look at 5 different business models in this space so
you could compare and contrast which ones you like or prefer.
And I'm going to break down all 5 and rank them from 5:00 to
1:00. And I like #1 so, so much, I
went ahead and interviewed the guy at the end of this.
(01:46):
What's his pricing strategy? What are his equipment regrets?
Why did he choose wood burning over electric?
You're not going to learn this stuff anywhere else.
So let's get started. All right, in 5th place is
Denver Mobile Sauna. This is Denver Mobile Sauna run
by a guy named Micah. Now, I'm only ranking this
business 5th because the competition is so high between
(02:08):
these five businesses that I'm profiling.
There's nothing wrong with this business.
Denver Mobile Sauna is a mobile sauna and cold plunge business
outside of Denver, which is the same type of business that my
number one on this list has. But I'll get into why I prefer
that business in a little bit. So just to set the stage, they
have mobile sauna and cold plunge units that they drive
around, drop off and rent out. Here's how their pricing works.
(02:30):
300 bucks for two hours, 450 bucks for four hours, 525 for 8,
or $600.00 for an overnight rental.
And for an extra $200 you can rent for the whole weekend.
So the math here is straightforward.
If you're doing just 10 rentals a month at an average of $450,
then you're looking at $4500 in monthly revenue.
But your costs are minimal. It's basically just your time
(02:51):
and your labor and a little bit of gas.
You do have to maintain the equipment and pay for insurance,
but those costs are very minimal.
I like the idea of charging bothper hour per day and per weekend
because this is called price anchoring.
Someone goes to the website withthe intent to book it per hour
and they see that they can pay just a little bit more to book
it for the weekend. About 70% of the time they're
(03:12):
going to go with that option. He's going to spend the same
amount of time and money and work picking that thing up and
dropping it off, whether they rent it for two hours or two
days. So you might as well juice a
little more revenue out of it. And the interesting part is that
he's not just doing drop offs. He's partnering with Wellness
Studios for pop up events. That's one thing that's unique
to this business that I didn't see in a lot of others.
(03:32):
This creates A recurring revenuestream without having the
overhead of a physical location.And the beauty of this model is
that you can start it as a side hustle.
You don't have to quit your fulltime job.
If you do 2 to 3 rentals on the weekends, then you're making an
extra 1 to $2000 a month just from weekends.
OK, 4th place is Cedar Grove Sauna.
This owner turned a side hustle into an empire.
(03:53):
Jackie Stratton up in Maine owned Cedar Grove Sauna and she
is a freaking legend. Here's why.
She started this business in 2020 as just a side hustle.
Looking for some offseason cash if you will.
Fast forward a few years and she's serving 8 to 12,000 people
per year. Let me repeat that, 12,000
people per year. And what blew my mind about this
is her operation. She only burns through 10 cords
(04:16):
of wood annually. And now 1 quart of wood is about
half of a truck bed full. And depending on the market
you're in, a quart of wood is going to cost you between 400
and $900. So right off the bat, we know
that her yearly would cost, which is her only real cost of
goods sold, is going to be between $409,000.
She has eight staff members and she operates 2 fixed locations
(04:39):
plus one mobile unit. Now, the reason I ranked her
above Denver Mobile Saunas is because she's hedging your bets.
Having a physical location sendsa signal to the market that
you're here to stay, that you'repermanent, and maybe that you're
a little more expensive. It's like when I used to operate
iPhone repair stores, I could charge much more at my stores
that were fixed in a shopping mall next to a McDonald's as
(05:01):
opposed to my locations that were just a mall kiosk or in an
airport because my customers hadno clue if I was actually going
to be there a month later if they had a warranty claim to
file. Don't underestimate the signal
that this real physical fix location sends to the market and
how much it helps you stand out from your mobile only
competitors. Now, Jackie's mobile unit
rotates weekly to different locations across New England,
(05:25):
and the brilliant part about it is that she's built an e-mail
list of sauna aficionados. These are people that literally
plan their summer Tuesdays around her events.
She's created a community, not just a business.
And I've noticed that she's so committed to authenticity that
she takes international study trips to Finland, Lithuania,
Latvia and Sweden. She's not just running a sauna
(05:45):
business for some extra cash. She's become the sauna expert in
her local market. And that also sends a signal
that you're a premium option andthat you know what you're
talking about. So what started as just a COVID
era side hustle has transformed into a full time operation
because her demand was overwhelming.
That's the power of starting small and letting customer
(06:05):
demand pull you forward. It's kind of like when Crumble
launched. I read so many articles that
talked about the thousands of cookie recipes that they tested
and how they took all of their learnings from Silicon Valley
and from building tech products and put it into the cookie
business. That story sells.
Believe it or not, that story enabled them to sell more
cookies when you might think on the surface that they're not
(06:26):
interrelated at all. So when it comes to Jackie's
business up in Maine, my key take away is that community
beats competition every single time.
She's not just selling sauna time.
This is not just a commodity, not just a way for her to make
some extra money. She sold the whole experience,
became an expert in it and builta tribe around it.
OK, third place, Chill Wagon Wellness.
(06:48):
And I love that among these fivebusinesses that I'm ranking,
we're hitting all pockets of theUnited States, not just the cold
markets for the saunas or the hot markets for the cold
plunges. This model works anywhere and
everywhere, so chill wagon Wellness.
I call these guys the Young Guns.
Vincent and Brock down in Arizona, 22 years old, doing
(07:08):
over $60,000 in monthly revenue.Here's exactly how they're doing
it. Their revenue model is private
bookings, 350 to $500.00 for a 2hour minimum.
Then they do events where they set up their units at festivals
and farmers markets and charge 35 to $45 per person just for
one quick session. Then they even do corporate jobs
(07:29):
where they come into companies and charge $1500 for 1/2 day
where all of the employees can use the units for free.
Their operational cost per eventare only 30 to $60.00 which is
just ice and gas. Here's what their setup looks
like. It's a custom trailer that has 2
cold plunges with jets and a sauna for five people,
compression boots, synthetic turf, and a really clean layout.
(07:52):
But what makes them brilliant isnot their trailer, it's the fact
that they're not just offering sauna and cold plunges.
They created a whole experience around this that's called plunge
dot sweat dot coffee. It's a branded event that's
basically workout, then cold plunge, then sauna, then a
coffee social. What's brilliant about this is
the increased surface area. You're casting a wider net.
(08:15):
Maybe some of these people have no interest in a sauna or a cold
plunge, they just want some coffee and hang out with their
friends. Maybe some of these people just
love cold plunges, don't even drink coffee, but they're going
to go for the cold plunge. It provides endless upsell
opportunities, endless surface area and enables you to capture
those customers that intend to come for a one time experience
and to sell them on recurring experience as well.
(08:37):
But their business to business strategy is where they really
shine. Here they partnered with another
local business called Burn Boot Camp and a few other local gyms
and the gym owners love these guys because it elevates the
entire event. It's kind of like having a Great
Clips inside a Walmart. It's a symbiotic relationship.
You go to get your hair cut. You know what, you might as well
pick up a watermelon. You go to pick up a watermelon
(08:58):
and hey, I need a haircut. It's Co marketing.
These are businesses that don't compete with each other, but
they're attracting the same typeof customer, someone concerned
about their health. And it enables the business
owners to position themselves asArizona's premier Wellness
concierge and not just a mobile sauna.
And now that I think about it, Denver mobile sauna was #5
(09:18):
because they weren't really doing any of these cool special
things. They weren't doing the hard
things. Remember, the harder way is
usually the better way. Coordinating events, calling
other business owners, forming partnerships.
That's as hard, and there are risks associated with it, but
that's what helps you stand out.Surely it's not cheap for Jackie
up in Maine to fly to Finland tolearn more about how saunas
(09:38):
work. And you're not going to see an
immediate return on investment with stuff like that.
But over the long run, if you'rewilling to play the long game,
it pays dividends, all right. Now, these guys in Arizona, they
spent 3500 bucks on Facebook adsand generated 80% of leads from
that ad spend. And I would bet that of the
remaining 20%, a lot of it came from that ad spend as well.
But it just happened organically.
(10:00):
For instance, you see a paid ad and you share it with a friend
depending on what your attribution looks like.
In other words, depending on howgranularly you're looking at
that data from Facebook, you mayor may not capture that
additional organic customer thatcame from your paid ad.
And these guys are focusing on business owner testimonials over
just individual reviews. And this is because their
(10:21):
business to business strategy isfirst and foremost, and business
owners trust other business owners more than they trust
individual consumer reviews. So they really, really put a lot
of effort into trying to get testimonials, case studies and
reviews from business owners that they're partnering with
other gyms, corporate events, festivals, etcetera.
These guys also have a huge location advantage.
(10:44):
Scottsdale and Phoenix is a wealthy demographic that has
year round demand for cold plunges because it's freaking
hot. It has a fitness success culture
and when they launched, somehow they had zero competition.
They've since added mobile IV therapy for additional revenue
streams. That's going to be a whole other
video. And I love that these 22 year
olds really understand that in the Wellness space, the money
(11:05):
comes from stacking services to maximize your RPC revenue per
customer. Med spas do this really well as
well. OK, time for #2 This guy's name
is Sam. He has a business down in
Cleburne, TX, about an hour fromme.
I interviewed him on my podcast a year ago.
It was episode 84 on audio, cameout on October 28th, 2024, or on
(11:27):
YouTube. You could see that interview in
the show notes below. Now, this business is called
Drips on a.co, and I promise they're not ranked #2 just
because I interviewed the owner and I know more about it.
It's because of the piggyback method, which I'll get to in a
minute. So the owner of Drips Sauna Sam,
is a guy that's a lot like me. He's distracted.
He's launching all kinds of different businesses.
He had a fencing business that did well, and then he's like,
(11:49):
let's try something else. Then he started installing stock
tanks, which looks something like this.
You buy it at Tractor Supply for500 bucks.
He installed some pool equipmentfrom Amazon that cost 1 or 200
bucks, graded the land, put it down, charged 3 to $5000, grew
it with Facebook ads. It's kind of like a kiddie pool,
but nicer and also for millennials.
(12:09):
And it's just a way to cool downin the hot Texas heat.
He started that business and crushed it and is still crushing
it, still growing it. That's a whole other episode as
well. But then he started thinking
about the contrast therapy business, which is what we're
talking about. Cold plunged to sauna, sauna to
cold plunge back and forth, all kinds of health benefits, yadda,
yadda, yadda. But he thought, I only want to
launch this if I can piggyback on another business and
(12:31):
immediately tap into their customer base.
So he gets a couple business partners and he starts looking
around, is there a gym? Is there some sort of a business
that I can put this inside of? Because you don't need a big
footprint and just immediately start tapping into their
customer base. Kind of like that Walmart Great
Clips example I just gave. And they came up with this idea
because they went to a bachelor party in Louisiana.
They woke up with hangovers and they went and did contrast
(12:53):
therapy. And that was their light bulb
moment. We need to bring this to Texas.
But here's where it gets brilliant.
They spent two years trying to find the right stand alone
location. Then Sam went to the gym.
One day he saw a picture of someunused space, sent it out to his
business partners and said hey, what if we just see if we can
use this space? It was about two bedrooms worth
of space. So we talked to the manager.
(13:14):
The manager said this could be interesting.
They worked out a deal and Sam started with four infrared
saunas that cost 7 to $8000 each.
All of these can be financed. He bought 2 Colt Plunges at
$10,000 each and he paid $2000 amonth to the gym to rent the
space. Now it's positioned in the
perfect spot. You walk into the gym, you get
checked in, you start going to the equipment, and you walk
(13:34):
right by this space. Within a few months they had 130
monthly recurring members that were paying them $75.00 a month
for unlimited usage of their units.
That's a 45 minute session. Or if they wanted to accommodate
walk in customers, they just charged 30 bucks per session.
In case you're not doing the math, that's over $10,000 a
monthly recurring revenue and they broke even in under a year,
(13:58):
including paying off all their equipment.
They're one regret they didn't install drains underneath the
cold plunges because swapping out the water is kind of a pain.
So if you're going to do this, install a drain.
Their competitors are charging over twice that same amount, 150
to 175 a month for the same exact equipment.
And it's more inconvenient for the customers because now they
(14:20):
have to go to the gym and then they have to drive to the
contrast therapy place. They are a one stop shop and
less than half the price. And their rent is even cheaper
than their competitors as well. Same equipment, half price, more
convenient for everyone. Win win win.
And if some of his customers want to bring the cold plunge to
them, he will install a stock tank at their house.
(14:41):
And that's a very unique setup, makes around $1500 profit per
job on those stock tank installations.
And he finds almost all of his customers from Facebook ads.
And any time you're an entrepreneurship, you always
want to offset the reliable recurring stuff with the one
hit, the higher ticket offerings.
The Sonic Whole plunge business brings in monthly recurring
revenue. The stock tank installation
(15:03):
business brings in thousands of dollars at a time.
And it's just nice because beingan entrepreneur is extremely
volatile, income is extremely lumpy, and it's nice to be able
to smooth that out a little bit.This one's number 2 because of
the gym partnership. He's got a built in customer
base on day one. There's natural cross promotion
opportunities. The gym shares their e-mail list
(15:24):
with him. He doesn't need any marketing
because the foot traffic is the marketing.
And I always like to say in any retail business, you can either
pick the best location or you can pick an OK location and
spend a lot more money in marketing.
Your location is your marketing.Now here are the tactics that
Sam uses to acquire customers. He makes this first session
free. This creates an addiction.
(15:46):
People love how they feel afterwards.
He offers both private and public cold plunges.
Private for introverts, public for the social content for the
extroverts. That's also a built in viral
marketing tactic. And it's just a great business.
So time for #1 purely nomadic sauna up in Grand Rapids in
Michigan, home of the Universityof Michigan.
This is Danny. I spent an hour talking to him
(16:08):
last month and I just love the way he did things from the
start. He started with one unit, he
paid $22,000 for it, and then headded a second unit for $10,000
once he had enough demand for that.
He's forecasting a full payback of all of this money within 12
to 18 months with 50% profit margins.
This business is great for him because he also has a home
inspection business and it helpsoffset that income.
(16:30):
And one kind of intangible that I love about this business is
that Danny gets his four kids involved to teach
entrepreneurship to his family. And as a father of four kids, I
completely endorse that. He also noticed that his
customers have more demand for awood burning authentic
experience. Remember, when it comes to a
sauna, you can do infrared, you can do electric sauna, and you
can do wood burning sauna. Now, of course, wood burning is
(16:52):
a little harder. You got to supply the wood that
comes out of your cost. If you use pine, it's going to
burn quickly. You want to use oak because it's
more dense, but it's also more expensive and heavier to carry
around. But Danny says it is well worth
it. He finds his customers on
Facebook Marketplace. That's it, Not boosted posts,
not paid ads, just organic free posting.
(17:12):
The Facebook marketplace and hispricing, 350 per day, 650 per
weekend, which is Friday eveningto Monday morning or 1200 for a
full week. His biggest business is Sonos,
but people can pay a little extra to add on a cold plunge,
which is just an inflatable tub that cost I think a few $100.
Now I really love the way Danny did this because his other
(17:33):
business, Home Inspection, is kind of seasonal, so this
business offsets that seasonality.
So if you have or want a seasonal business, the best way
to combat that seasonality is toadd another seasonal business to
the other seasons. My friend owns a bunch of
pressure washing businesses and he says the best thing a
pressure washing business can dois to start a Christmas light
installation business. If he could do it all over
(17:54):
again, he would have bought his second unit first because the
second unit was cheaper and it'sa lot lighter because it's an
aluminum cedar hybrid. It weighs about half as much and
you can move it by hand. Another thing I love about his
story is that he was the first mover in Grand Rapids, much like
the guys in Scottsdale. Do a simple scrape on Outscraper
or just do a simple Google search on Google Maps and see if
(18:15):
you have competitors within an hour of you.
Now I'm just going to sound likean eternal optimist here, but
whether you have a lot of competitors or no competitors,
either one could be good. A lot of competitors could
signal a lot of market awareness.
A lot of people looking for thisservice, a lot of opportunity to
stand out and be better. No competitors means less market
awareness and not a lot of people could be searching for
(18:36):
it. But if you can educate the
market a little bit, you can be first because surely eventually
there will be other competitors.Why not be first?
Now, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty about
insurance cost, towing capacity,what is cash cows are other
customer acquisition strategies where he finds his wood, where
he finds operational efficiencies, how he partners
(18:56):
with wedding parties, birthday parties, events.
Check out my interview with him right at the end of this
episode. All right, key takeaways from
all five of these businesses, Facebook ads, Facebook ads,
Facebook ads, Facebook ads. They're driving 60 to 80% of
leads across multiple operators.And the great thing about
Facebook ads is that you can start with just a Facebook
Marketplace post. If you've got demand on Facebook
Marketplace, then you'll have even more demand if you boost
(19:18):
that Facebook Marketplace post. And then you'll have even more
demand if you're willing to do proper Facebook ads.
Also, I made a 45 minute video called Facebook Ads Guide for
Noobs that's in the show notes as well.
Of these five businesses, the ones that are doing the best are
partnering. They're partnering with existing
businesses that have the same customer base.
Gyms, Wellness studios, Airbnb's.
(19:38):
Make your first session free. Get testimonials from business
owners, not just from consumers.Offer tiered pricing.
Just like the popcorn at the movie theaters.
You're probably going to go for the biggest one because there's
only $0.79 extra. The same principle applies here
also. When you book these corporate
events, it's a lot more surface area.
Every single employee that uses your unit on their employer's
(20:00):
dime might become a customer of yours on an individual level.
You're not selling cold plunges.You're not selling saunas.
You're selling longevity. You're selling an experience.
You're selling doing hard things.
You're selling that feeling thatpeople get when they come out of
these things. You're selling the sizzle, not
the steak. Do not underestimate location.
Ever. Never underestimate location,
(20:22):
whether that's physical locationor digital location of where
you're advertising your business.
It's everything. This industry is still in the
education phase, but you will beriding a tidal wave.
We're still very early. We'll probably still be early in
three to five years. That means you got to be
patient. Probably helps if you have a
love for this thing as a user ofsaunas or cold lunches, it'll
help this business or side us will be more sustainable for
(20:44):
you. All right, without further ado,
please hear from Danny directly of Nomadic Saunas up in
Michigan. Share this with a friend that
might want to start this business.
And thanks for hanging out on the Kerner office.
OK, so you start cold plunging literally in a lake by cutting
out the ice. You're into it.
Your wife's not. Then you're like, all right, to
get the full benefits, we got todo sauna and cold plunge.
You get an infrared sauna. You don't like it so much, you
(21:06):
build a real sauna, you like it.And then at that point, because
your, your brain works kind of like mine, it's like, all right,
how do I monetize this? Actually, when I built the cold
plunge in the backyard, my wife was like, oh, well, if you're
going to do this crazy thing, I'll do it with you.
So she actually jumped pretty quickly, jumped on board and
really enjoyed it. So yeah, so I started looking at
what it would cost to build 1. And I was like, the cost, the
time, I don't know if I can do that.
(21:26):
And then I saw a guy over in theMinnesota post, hey, I got 3
saunas. I'm switching kind of how I do
my business. I'm selling them, Here's the
pricing. And I looked at them and I was
like, yeah. And I started doing the math in
my head and I'm like, I can't build them for the amount of
time. And I started thinking of like,
OK, I'm taking time away from myother, from my home inspection
business. I'm like I can't do it for
(21:47):
cheaper than this. And this is for a mobile sauna
specifically. Correct, correct.
What was the price? I bought 2 of them actually from
him. One was here over 20 grand.
The other one was there under 10grand.
I originally wanted one, kind ofreached out, said hey, so he
shot me some videos, gave me some details and I was like,
hey, yeah, I got to do this. So we talked about it, reached
(22:09):
out, said, you know, so I drove out there, picked it up.
When I was out there, I was looking at kind of the other two
he had for sale and I was like, yeah, maybe if, you know, things
go good, we can at some point dosomething and.
If you have one rental unit of any in any business, you rent it
out and you're done. You can't rent it out again,
Right. So that's probably what you're
thinking. You're optimistic.
You're like, yeah, I don't know,I'm feeling pretty good about
this. Like, I'm going to buy one,
(22:30):
might as well buy two. Yeah.
Yeah, so I get back and start using it.
And part of the thing was like, hey, I never had a wood, wood
burning 1. So it's going to take me some
time to figure this out. I love sauna.
Like, hey, so almost every nightwe're cranking up the sauna.
I just parked at my friend, my driveway neighbors were coming
over. I'm just kind of doing a little
community, you know, community sauna.
(22:50):
So yeah, I just kind of enjoyingit, figuring out the little
quirks. And, you know, I think what I've
realized through one of my favorite things about business
and starting businesses is figuring out the process and
then kind of creating efficiencies around the process.
And so it's like, OK, how can I make this process the most
efficient? I mean, I got to kind of try it
and figure it out and make mistakes and yeah, just have fun
(23:13):
with it. So I can kind of do that.
So I started doing that. My wife is a designer, so she
started doing some of the working on some of the back end
design. We started the website and you
know, one of the things, obviously the sauna doesn't have
too many consumables other than wood.
I mean, that's obviously the biggest expense, if you will.
And my parents, they live on a farm and they have access to a
(23:34):
lot of free wood. Yeah.
So when it comes to the wood, isthere like an authentic sauna
that doesn't need wood necessarily or if you're going
to start a business in this likeyou kind of need an authentic
sauna that's. So you can do, you can do
electric, there are electric saunas where you can get like
steam and it can feel very close.
(23:54):
The problem with that is, well, how are you going to guarantee
that there's the correct power source on site?
I mean, with electric vehicles, people do have a lot more
304050AMP plugs in the garage, but I mean, at least here in
West Michigan, most people don'thave that.
So you know. OK, do I drag a generator along?
Then you got to SO. The wood burning is critical for
(24:16):
the rental aspect because of thepower issue.
Because of the mobile and the power.
Yeah, yeah. Whereas if this were a fixed at
someone's home, then it would burning is not as important.
No, no. Then you could easily do the
electric and still get. With some of the nicer electric
ones you can definitely get a lot more.
Is it the full real experience as an electric one?
Like if I wanted one of my house, would I be OK with
(24:37):
electric or is it kind of not fully authentic or effective?
There's something about the nostalgia of just like, actually
feeding a firewood. I mean, I'm kind of a pyro.
I'm a. Pyro.
So I get it. So it's like there's something,
there's something about that youcan put it at a, you know, on
your driveway in the city. You can take it out to your lake
house. You can take it out to the
(24:57):
woods. You know, it's like, yeah, that
you can have in a lot different,different areas.
The guy in Minnesota who I bought them from, he had
actually worked out a deal with the Minnesota parks where he had
it parked at one of their like boat launches.
So he kind of feed them some of the proceeds as a fee to have it
there. And then he's kind of going more
instead of like, so the way I dothings is it's more of either a
(25:20):
weekend or a week, week long rental.
So I bring it out, drop it off, give you all the woods, teach
you how to use it, and then comeback and pick it up.
So when you go out to see these,you end up buying two of them
then? So I bought the first one, drove
that home. It was probably a couple months
later he texted me and goes, hey, I got somebody interested
in the other one. I've already done business with
(25:40):
you. I know you kind of mentioned you
were interested. If you want it, I'll give you
kind of first dibs on it. OK, so you bring the thing home.
When does the mobile cold plungecome into it?
That's an interesting thing thatwe've been planned.
So I bought a couple of there's like the inflatable kind of like
the same like stand up paddle board material type cold
plunges. So I've picked up a couple of
(26:00):
those and what I'm realizing is like, man, unless you have a
chiller in the summertime in Michigan, it's hard to keep that
water cold. So our goal or our idea is to
just kind of stick with those inflatable tubs, bring those
along. You can fill them up, put ice in
there, leave it outside in the cold.
It's not a higher ticket rental item, but it's just one of those
(26:21):
add-ons where, yeah, most peopledo want to do that kind of
contrast therapy. What I've seen a lot of other
kind of sauna businesses do is they do kind of like an outdoor
shower type deal. You hook the hose up to it, kind
of just either have like a pull string or something, we can turn
it on. You know, I get that cold water
and get back in the sauna. So there's a couple different
(26:41):
options for doing that and yeah.OK.
So are you're not always rentingout both together?
You rent out that them out individually as well or they
always go together? The saunas are the ones we
mainly rent out and then the cold plunges that kind of an add
on, if you will to the to the sauna.
So you never, Yeah, you don't rent out the cold plunge by
itself? No, you primarily rent out the
sauna. And sometimes people pay extra
(27:02):
for the. Cold.
The cold lunge. Yep, correct.
And it's just like, it's just the inflatable ones with the
chiller on it, correct? How much do those cost?
The flavor ones are just a couple 100 bucks.
Those are pretty. Oh wow, pretty cheap and they're
pretty. Good.
If you want a chiller then they're, you know, they're
anywhere from 1000 to, you know,a couple 1000 bucks.
So let's go back to when you first buy the sauna, you bring
(27:23):
it back home. What does the business look like
those first 30 days? What do you do first, Rick, when
you start the website, when you start marketing, how do you
market all that? Yeah.
I think I kind of took the approach that I did when I
started my home inspection business was I want to build a
good digital kind of foundation.I've seen how Google how getting
in early is important and pays dividends in the long run.
(27:46):
Here in Grand Rapids. I don't know of any other mobile
sauna rental companies. There's a couple on the
outskirts kind of outside of Grand Rapids in West Michigan
area, one up in Rockford and kind of over by the Lakeshore.
But my thought was, OK, I want to get in early and even if I'm
not running this thing full force, I at least want to start
laying that foundation. So getting the Google business,
(28:09):
trying to start getting reviews,trying to get the website up,
start putting pictures, start getting kind of all those things
that Google likes to see. So you do that first week or so.
Yep, first couple weeks doing that, we just, our daughter is
coming up on three months old. So it's been a little, it was a
little bit of a crazy time to decide to, to start a business,
(28:29):
but that's how life works out and you just got to roll with
it. But so one of the things we
decided to try was, hey, let's just throw this out on
Marketplace, you know, not really push it hard yet, but
just kind of get some rentals under our belt and kind of go
through the process. And so that's kind of what we
did throughout there. And like anything on
Marketplace, you get some, you know, random people taking tires
and then you get some people like, hey, I want it for this
(28:51):
weekend. And so got our first couple
rentals through that. Sorry, what did your Facebook
Marketplace post look like? Like you you post pictures of
the unit, How did you price it? Was it priced by the day, by the
week? And I imagine people were
probably on there looking to buyone that not even looking for
rentals and it just kind of popped up.
Correct, correct. So yeah, I just kind of, I put
the day price on the listing of hey, mobile sauna rental, 350
(29:15):
bucks. And then in the description
like, hey, there's a mobile sauna, here's some details,
here's my pricing for weekend week.
And then I put the website down there like, hey, if you want
more details, here's the website.
And that was kind of just a funnel to get people through to
the website. I use Squarespace.
They have the acuity scheduling,so I threw that up there.
Yeah, I actually got a couple rentals.
(29:35):
So 350 for a day and how much for a week?
It's 6:50 for a weekend, Friday evening to either Saturday
evening or Monday morning and then a week is 1200. 1200 Now
what does your average customer look like?
Is it a dad, a mom? A family?
A party? A group?
A business. This last one I had to a wedding
(29:56):
and the wedding day, the guys are like, well, I mean, the
girls are doing the makeup and all the, you know, the process
of getting ready. The guys were like, well, we
don't have much to do. So what are we going to do?
Like, oh, we'll rent a sauna andwe'll kind of hang out, get some
cool pictures and yeah, that we kind of kill some time, but also
not just be some trolling a thumb.
So I've had birthday party and alot of it is people interested
(30:19):
in kind of the health and Wellness and just people who
are, yeah, looking at kind of experiencing something
different. I've had at least one guy be
like, yeah, I want to build my own, but I wanted to kind of try
something out first before I, you know, before I start a three
month process of, yeah, buildinga sauna.
So. It's just surprising to me that
(30:40):
a wedding party would even thinkto do that, you know, Like, why
do you think they thought, let'srent a mobile sauna?
Like, is it the culture up therein Michigan or they're just
becoming more popular? It's not really West Michigan.
It's definitely not part of the culture here.
You go up to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan, and the
sauna culture is pretty strong up there.
(31:01):
One of the bigger colleges in Michigan, Northern Michigan, I
didn't get that info when I was talking to them.
They're like, Oh yeah, we've alldone sauna.
Like, you know, we've done electric in wood.
And so they were definitely somehow steeped in that culture.
But yeah, I think at this point,it's definitely mostly people
who have been around it and like, oh, yeah.
So we have a small group from church and we rent out about
(31:21):
this big kind of lake. It's during the winter or during
the summer. It's a summer camp during the
winter. They rented out just to anybody
who wants to use it. So we rent that out every
winter. And when we're out there, that's
kind of where I started cold plunging.
One of the guys was like, we gotto rent a mobile sauna and bring
it out here. And that's where I had kind of
first heard of that idea. Before that, I would have never,
you know, thought of of that you.
(31:43):
Decide how to price it for thosefirst couple jobs.
I kind of went off of just kind of what other saunas, you know,
the two other companies that were kind of semi close by kind
of what they were going for. And I had been kind of watching
their calendars through the lastlast winter to see, OK, what
availabilities do they have? How many weekends out are they
booked? And just kind of getting some of
(32:04):
that data of like, you know, andobviously not all of that could
be true. You know, sometimes they could
be, you know, have an event or doing something themselves, But
and then kind of basing it on that just to have kind of
similar, similar pricing to whatthey have.
And then, you know, and then theguy who I bought him from in, in
Minnesota, he kind of, you know,yeah, kind of went off of kind
of what he was doing too. And he was saying Minnesota, you
(32:25):
know, he started I think like 4-5 years ago and was one of the
1st. And now there's just, I mean,
there's a ton of mobile rental, mobile sauna rental companies in
Minnesota. So he said the market there's
definitely, definitely happened.You know, for me, it's like,
hey, having a couple other mobile sauna rental businesses
in the area is great because it it builds awareness that hey,
this is actually a thing that you can do when you're you're
(32:48):
the only one. It's yeah, you're, you're kind
of fighting upstream, but it's nice to have yeah, other people
kind of doing it too. So.
How did you get your jobs after that first wave of Facebook
Marketplace posts? So we're still kind of in that
in that first wave. I'm starting kind of looking at
this next wave. I'm think the research I've
done, you know, summertime, not a huge, not a huge market for
(33:12):
songs. You'll have the occasional guy,
the guy in Minnesota, he's like,yeah, I pretty much shut down
during the summer because this is a full time thing.
And he's like, yeah, I kind of shut down, spend time with my
family to, you know, do other things.
Just he's like the first two years I marketed, marketed,
marketed, couldn't really drop drum up enough stuff to make it
worth it. So he's like, if I get calls,
I'll still rent them out, but I'm not pursuing anything, not
(33:36):
really, you know, on the pavement.
And then he's like, but then, you know, come the beginning of
fall, once you start getting some cool evening, some cool
days, he's like, that's when it's just, yeah, when it really
takes off, so. How long have you been at this
business now? Three or four months.
So pretty wow. OK.
Yeah. All right.
So first month goes by, you get your first jobs, you like what
you see, then you decide to buy the second one, right?
(33:59):
Yes, Yep. OK.
And was that a good decision? Were you happy you did that?
Were you able to keep both rented at the same time at least
occasionally? So I haven't gotten to that
point yet. So I mean, at this point
financially is it was it a good decision?
We'll see. My big thing was with the amount
of interest there are in mobile saunas, I don't have any fear
(34:21):
that it Yeah, hey, if a year from now it's like I can't rent
this thing out, you know, yeah, there's I can definitely offload
it, but I don't I don't foresee having an issue.
I think one of the I've been kind of trying to play around
with, okay, what can I do offseason, right where I can,
you know, try to get these at least semi consistently booked
up. And one of the things I've
(34:41):
thought about is partnering withAirbnb or other short term
rentals where it's like, hey, you can have this kind of as an
add on, you know, when people are renting it out, it'll draw
attention to your listing. But then also, you know, a way
to partner, especially for, you know, we have a lot of lakes
here in West Michigan, Michigan.So, you know, a lot of those
lake, that's one of the things that I've kind of seen where
people are willing to do the sauna even when it's hot
(35:04):
outside, if they have a lake that they can just kind of go
and jump in and yeah. You really haven't even gone
through a full season. Then you bought the second one
to kind of prepare for the winter time.
To prepare for the winter, Yeah.Yeah.
One of my big things is kind of doing this as a family.
I want my kids to get that entrepreneurial bug.
I want them to see kind of the process of OK, what does it look
like? And OK, what you know, what are
(35:26):
the insurance and outs? And, you know, we're moving into
this new world with AI where, you know, that nine to five job,
you know, who knows what's goingto happen in that world?
And I think being able to know the process to to start a
business, to run a business, to operate a business and, you
know, to see some of the frustrations and some of the,
you know, just like, OK, like what does that look like?
(35:47):
And so, yeah, exposing my kids to that.
What other marketing channels have you tested to to get
bookings successfully? So those are the only ones I've
done so far. Just Facebook Marketplace.
Yep, Yep. I've had a couple events that
have kind of reached out. We just kind of weren't ready
for that like a fitness, there was a fitness week.
(36:08):
They're like, oh, can we set up the sauna?
And I was trying to do that, butjust kind of didn't, wasn't able
to get everything in place by then.
But yeah. So I think there's events like
that. I think long term events aren't
really my goal. I tried to guard my weekends and
evenings for family if I can. But I do know that that is one
of the avenues a lot of mobile sauna rental companies do is
(36:28):
what where they'll, you know, either park it at a Lake, Park
it in a lot to kind of a hey, wegot a one hour time slot, got 8
slots, you know, 30 bucks a person.
And then you just kind of have wave after wave and you're there
kind of managing the sauna. So I do know that is one of the
one of the ways people do that. You know, again, that is an
option to get things rolling. But again, the less weekend
(36:51):
evening work I can do, the better in my opinion.
When it comes to burning the wood in the sauna, do you need a
certain type of wood like hardwood?
Softwood does not really matter.If you get it up to 100 and
9200°, you definitely need a hardwood oak, Maple.
But oak, oak is the best, the easiest kind of the find around
here. You know, the drier it is, the
(37:12):
hotter it's going to burn. So yeah, So having seasoned
hardwoods is definitely key. The nice thing about the saunas
is though, they're very efficient at burning.
I thought that was one of the things that I was surprised by,
just the you throw a couple logsin there to get her going and
then you know, maybe one or two while you're saunaing and then
that's really it, so. What kind of towing capacity do
(37:34):
you need to pull one of these things?
So the first one I bought is a little bit beefier, it's £3500.
So you definitely need, you know, like a full size truck.
The second one I bought is actually it's a company I think
they're in a Minnesota, it's aluminum trailer, which is
pretty lightweight. And then they use, they frame it
with cedar like 2 by fours. And then the outside is a
(37:57):
thermoplastic. So it's kind of like a
translucent plastic. So it's super light.
So I can pick that one up, move it around kind of by hand at
first when I was like, yeah, this is a little I don't know.
But the more I use that one, I'mlike, who?
This is definitely the way to go.
And as far as the sizing goes, that one holds about as many as
you know as this bigger one. It just doesn't have a changing
(38:19):
room. So you know for certain, for
most situations that was just asgood.
What are you forecasting your payback period will be like once
the cold season starts? How quickly do you think you can
pay off your first unit? I think it'll take about a year,
year and a half. Insurance is, you know, it's not
cheap, but it's not expensive. It's nothing crazy.
It's couple 1000 bucks and then it's a year.
(38:41):
Yep. And that's an additional 500
persona after that first one. So from the amount of interest,
I'm already starting to kind of have some bookings out into
fall. So there's already kind of some,
some of that interest coming in.Again, definitely not running
this as my main source of income, but just having
something, you know, on the sides.
Again, just trying to kind of create separate revenue streams.
(39:02):
So I would think you've got likeover 50% net margins with this
business like your costs are your gas, your costs are the
insurance and then your time andwould, right.
Is there anything else I'm missing?
I mean, yeah, again, I have access to free wood, so it's not
a huge, you know, but it's more of the time of going out and
cutting it. And that is one thing I did hear
a lot from other business ownersis don't let people use their
(39:24):
own wood. Don't let people try to throw.
Yeah, yeah, throw their they. Can't control what they do with.
It they're old deck boards in there and then you're.
Yeah. So yeah.
What would you have done differently looking back with
this business? I mean nothing at this point.
I think the only thing is I might have.
I personally love this sauna that I'm in.
The bigger one as far as you know, business wise, I think the
(39:48):
other one makes more sense. Just as far as it's easy to tell
it's a weighs less. I can move it by hand.
I probably would have gone the other way, started with that
other one. And what was the price and size
difference between the two? So the first one was 20 like
21122 hundred something like that or 20. 2022 thousand.
(40:09):
Yeah, 22,000. And how big was it?
So it's got about AI think it's a 10 foot like hot room and then
it has like a four foot like changing room.
It has a solar powered battery for lights in the sauna and has
an outside loud light. It's a bigger stove, it's a
nicer stove. It looks a lot more kind of
(40:31):
classic sauna all. Right, what do you think?
Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on
the Kerner office.
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