Ever felt the power of a cold shower on your soul? Ponder over this as you join us for an enriching hour with Andrew Lachlan, CEO and founder of Sauna House. Andrew, once an athlete, narrates his struggles with alcoholism after his athletic career ended. In this raw, personal narrative, he shares his journey to sobriety and how breathwork and meditation became his saviors. The conversation also sheds light on the overlooked facet of recovery for athletes, and how cold water therapy was instrumental in his journey.
If you thought your phone was your best friend, this episode might make you think again. We, along with Andrew, dive into the lost art of communal bathing. A practice rooted in human history, it has been overshadowed by technology, but still holds the promise to provide us with a sense of accomplishment and connection. Together, we navigate how to safeguard our hearts and minds from the constant digital noise and stay truly present.
As we wrap up, we illuminate the mission behind Sauna House. Andrew's vision is to alleviate human suffering and he aims to do this by providing access to communal bathing spaces. We explore the magic of natural healing, the potency of weight training, endurance training, and the marvels of cold therapy. Embrace the power of endurance, natural healing, and most importantly, a cold shower for the soul. Be prepared to shift your perspective and challenge yourself in ways you never imagined.
Follow Playing Injured on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/playinginjured/
Ever felt the power of a cold shower on your soul? Ponder over this as you join us for an enriching hour with Andrew Lachlan, CEO and founder of Sauna House. Andrew, once an athlete, narrates his struggles with alcoholism after his athletic career ended. In this raw, personal narrative, he shares his journey to sobriety and how breathwork and meditation became his saviors. The conversation also sheds light on the overlooked facet of recovery for athletes, and how cold water therapy was instrumental in his journey.
If you thought your phone was your best friend, this episode might make you think again. We, along with Andrew, dive into the lost art of communal bathing. A practice rooted in human history, it has been overshadowed by technology, but still holds the promise to provide us with a sense of accomplishment and connection. Together, we navigate how to safeguard our hearts and minds from the constant digital noise and stay truly present.
As we wrap up, we illuminate the mission behind Sauna House. Andrew's vision is to alleviate human suffering and he aims to do this by providing access to communal bathing spaces. We explore the magic of natural healing, the potency of weight training, endurance training, and the marvels of cold therapy. Embrace the power of endurance, natural healing, and most importantly, a cold shower for the soul. Be prepared to shift your perspective and challenge yourself in ways you never imagined.
Follow Playing Injured on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/playinginjured/
Welcome to another episode of playing injured. We have Andrew Lachlan, ceo and founder of sauna house. Andrew, how we doing.
Speaker 2:Dude, I'm doing so good. Thanks for having me on today. It's been a big week, but I'm powered by sonical therapy, so always a good week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Um, and you and I, we're just talking. I'm like man, you have to get to chicago, you have to get to sauna house. Uh, sauna, cold plunge like this is perfect for athletes, but not even just athletes people Out there that are looking to recover, looking to overcome different things, um, in their life. But you know, I would love to hear from you Um, how did you get into it? How did you? How did this even start? Um?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, it started a long time ago. I mean, I, I was an athlete growing up so I played ice hockey and lacrosse as my two primary sports and, um, you know, after my athletic career kind of wound up. Um, my alcoholism kind of wound up, yeah, and and by the time I was 23 I was kind of like suicidal and extremely alcoholic and um, that was I got sober for the first time and I got very lucky you know, but real quick, yeah.
Speaker 1:What do you think? What do you think caused that heavy alcohol consumption? Was it like yeah, you had identity change, you were playing, yeah, yeah, so?
Speaker 2:like what came into that? Yeah, I think that's that's a great question. I, I think it was a number of things, but One was like I, I was used to doing practice all year round, all the time, day in, day practice, and, um, when that went away, like that structure and that discipline, all those things went away. But later I realized like I lost my community and I lost my purpose, right, and, um, I wasn't sure where I fit in the world Combined with, you know, some of the challenges from growing up, and I think my family is pretty predisposed to be alcoholic. My mom has seven brothers and many of them have struggled with alcohol. Yeah, so I think I think it's a little bit of everything, but, um, definitely a dark time and and Again, I feel super fortunate to have come out of it. You know, I feel like I got off the elevator early. It was certainly going down.
Speaker 2:The first time I got sober was at 23. That lasted just under two years and then I thought, oh, yeah, I can drink again. And, um, then I started drinking again and about 16 months later I quit again and now it's been about 11 years. So, um, again, it's just I looking back, it's like I can't even remember that. That was me. It's unbelievable. I remember when I got first got sober, I was like people had like four years. I'd be like four years, like are you kidding me? Like how you making four years, dude? Um, you know, and that that that cross of the five year mark was crazy. And now it's been a decade and I'm like it's been a decade, dude, that's, it's just wild that is.
Speaker 1:It is crazy because obviously entrepreneur Probably have a lot of business meetings, a lot of friends travel, a bunch. Alcohol is is is very prevalent when doing all this.
Speaker 2:Totally, and I I mean, I I chalk it up to you know some kind of higher power, right like you. You have to have a power deep down within Inside of you that there's. There's this faith that, no matter what, I'm gonna be okay, and that took a long time to foster, but I'm a big fan of meditation and breathwork. Now, um, things like that continue to help me, but I can truly say like the obsession to drink has been removed for me, which you know is is a blessing. My wife drinks, there's alcohol in my house and I, I moved through the world in a way that, um, I feel extremely grateful to be able to move through it this way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you talked about, was it like a? What caused you to stop, what caused you to be like, okay, I'm, this is I'm done with this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, my now wife was like get out, dude. She was like enough, dude, enough is enough. It's time for you to either get out or get sober. And I was like. I was like, well, I guess I'll get sober again. Um, so I I gave it another try.
Speaker 2:It took me a little while to to figure that out, but you know, I could tell that when I drank I just wasn't the best version of myself. When you're an athlete and you compete at high levels, you like you know when you're competing at a high level and At the end of the day you got to be honest with yourself and look in the mirror, be like am I competing at a high level or am I just, like, um, kicking the can down the road? You know, when I drink alcohol, everything kind of starts to fall apart. I've trashed like a couple of businesses. I was always a small business owner, so, like high school, I had my own company and then I sort of lost a lot of money and you know, up and down with my business and my drink and All those things. So I mean, this is probably my fifth company. Um, I don't know how many LLCs I've had now, but yeah, sauna house has been the best thing ever for me because kind of fast forwarding out that athlete which is always turn on, turn on, turn on right.
Speaker 2:And now we know through sports, science and anecdotally, the ability to turn off, meditate, do recovery, rest, sleep it's directly related to your ability to that turn off Right. So a friend introduced me to cold water therapy two years after I got sober the second time and I was still struggling with a ton of anxiety and depression, to be honest with you, and I was working on I was working for somebody else and working on a side hustle thing that I was doing and I was still just depressed. And the second, after I started using cold water therapy, it cleared up so much anxiety and depression for me, I could tell my inflammation levels were lower, I was happier. So and then I started to get into all the communal spaces in San Francisco and then internationally. And then when my wife and I moved to Asheville to start our family, she was like why don't you open a bathhouse? So I was like maybe.
Speaker 2:I guess like I'll. So I started like pencil in numbers and trying to figure it out for about a year, and then we went in we started out. 12 and a half months later, covid hits and we shut it down and you know, we got, we got lucky reopening and some of the government programs really, really helped us stay alive.
Speaker 2:And now to say that we're like franchising and we've got three corporate stores under construction and five territories sold and the team's growing like crazy and selling stuff and it's just crazy. It's crazy. The last four years have been a crazy blur.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy how you guys. So you started beginning out of the pandemic and then through the pandemic. You guys closed down. You know you had some luck on your side. It sounds like right.
Speaker 2:Always, I think, you know, yeah, always. I feel like if you put positive energy out in the world and you connect with other positive people, you just increase the surface area of luck. And you know, I've been fortunate that myself and the rest of the Son of House team has been doing that for long enough, that the luck platter got big enough and now we're getting lucky for the first time in a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. And, man, you're talking about the higher power as well. I think all of it, it all comes together and, man, people don't know. You know, I used to take a. I used to take an ice bath every day during my college basketball career.
Speaker 2:After, every day. You did how you like it.
Speaker 1:But it took me to until my senior year to have the maturity level to do that because it was so uncomfortable. You know my early years I would maybe before a game day. It was too uncomfortable, it was too painful.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, sometimes when they pack a tub full of ice that's, there's no data to support. That's better, right. So if you were getting in the real cold tanks which you probably were, they usually don't buy some of their tanks. You college athletes get the ice buckets and then that's really a lot on the nervous system. I really don't recommend people get water that cold. Anything under 60 is really good, and then it's just about the time and how long, but really, really cold can be super hard on the nervous system. So I would have been like you avoid at all costs dude. Yeah, 100%, I think a lot of people we don't know.
Speaker 1:We just want to be. Everybody wants to be. You know, the most hardcore like I've seen, like JJ what I don't have seen, jj Watt, like up in Wisconsin top the whole ocean during the winter time and sat in the ocean. It was crazy and it's cool. It's cool to see. Obviously, you know what I love about kind of the cold exposure is the sense of accomplishment after you do it, because you realize it is so uncomfortable and so painful and then once you get through it, you realize that you can do this all the time and then the more you do it it actually gets a lot easier.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's it Like and that you build that mental fortitude over time and I'm with you. The sense of accomplishment is great and you get like oxytocin and norepinephrine and all these really great hormones that make you feel good, and dopamine, so it has all these magical things to it. I think, and I always encourage people to just try a little bit and just work your way up. You know, just make progress and no one else's fun is watching people cool, plunge together right, Because then, like they like I love the phrase a bond is forged in adversity.
Speaker 2:You know, and you got these. Got these people that never in their life find their way cold water, like dipping their toe down in the water at Funhouse, and they're like you're really going to do this with me? They get in there and bond and overcome challenges and that's fun to watch 100%.
Speaker 1:And then it's nothing like you being experienced in bringing somebody in for the first time and how crazy they kind of act when they do it and calm them down and it's like see, it wasn't that bad right. And so it's like these life lessons to going through these challenges of like doing and doing it with community right, and I love. I was looking at the website and I'm looking at it right now on my other screen and at the sauna house. It's sauna, cold plunge, no phones. Right, you got, and I remember for me I had to have my phone, I needed something to distract me, but now it's like no phones. You create an environment that's all about connection, going through adversity, challenging yourself and doing it in a community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a unique environment. The history of communal bathing finds me amazing, right? Humans everywhere, sometimes somewhere communally bathed, and they usually did that based on whatever was around. You know, if you grew up in Japan, you were using volcanic pools that were worn by volcanoes and that's pretty luxury for the time. I can tell you that If you were like in Rome, they built Rome baths. If you were up in Finland, they had a little wooden box and a bunch of freezing cold water and they just, you know, burned fires and put hot stones inside of these little boxes and heated them up real hot and then back and forth between freezing water and sauna.
Speaker 2:So everybody's done it. It's fundamentally human. We want to bring that human connection back. You know we're all on our phones and our screens so much nowadays and the technology detoxing aspect and being really like present in space is something that sadly, is moving away from culture. You know, you go through an airport and like everybody just on a phone or laptop or iPad, right, like that's compared to our evolution, like that is crazy.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and you know I was. I was just listening to a podcast this morning and it was on like protecting your heart and protecting your mind. And we're on our phones so much and there's so many things that can trigger us, so many things that can distract us, so many things that just aren't even good for us or productive for us to look at, and we do that all day, every day. Yeah, watch on Sunday, and we're just not protecting our heart, we're not protecting our mind. Is distracting us or making us depressed or anxious, right, and so that's just another thing that we can do to overcome depression, anxiety. Yeah, yes, being as focused as possible. And I know, I don't know I was watching something. I was watching an interview of yours to where you said you don't even watch TV.
Speaker 2:This is probably. Yeah, yeah, I, I I've been tempted recently, but the Oppenheimer film that just came out, like I love history and World War Two is fascinating, so I was tempted, but right now I do. I just try and really hard to keep it simple. You know, it's not about, like, bragging rights or anything like that. It's about the stimulus that comes into my mind because that's going to what's going to produce the slot thoughts on the other end. You know, and you know, if you want to focus on your business, focus on your business and focus on books about business and focus on inspiring podcasters and things like that, right, and then your thoughts will start to populate the way all their thoughts do. And you pair that with, like James Clear's book on atomic happen habits and your lethal weapon out there, right like, and everything is just trying to get your attention right, you're.
Speaker 2:You're the commodity, right like, the world wants you on it, and and that's mostly in the form of a screen and if you can surf through those screens in a way that educates you and inspires you and connects you to more people, and that that's a great way to use technology to grow and accomplish your goals. Too right, because we got to evolve with it, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, and you know you talk about, and especially as an entrepreneur or as a leader, somebody is looking to be as productive as possible. We realize that focus, focus and attention is our.
Speaker 2:Most is like our goal right you're on, you're on it, you're doing it, you're doing it.
Speaker 1:But you know I've learned from. You know I've also had issues with it as well. It's very easy for me to get on YouTube and all of a sudden I've been into this crazy rabbit hole. I'm on Instagram and I go into a crazy rabbit rabbit hole. I had to get rid of tick tock.
Speaker 2:I couldn't do tick tock because the best thing you ever did for your mental health. Dude 100%. I would say so for me and I'm not I'm not perfect either, you know his charge like on Saturday morning my kids will be like playing in the litter and I'm like sneaking on loop net to look for like buildings for sauna house. You know, always like Scouring the Internet for real estate and sometimes I definitely use that as a distractionary tool, but I justify it because it's somewhat related to work, you know.
Speaker 1:You know your environment that you set up, but you also talk about. You know you talked about how you had a couple companies right and then you've had moments where you've gone through adversity and you've had to overcome. What about resilience for you, even even with sauna house? You know going through it in the image. How do you, yeah, zillion through times and keep going at it?
Speaker 2:I mean one. I think that higher power is a big part of it. And then you know the people that around you, the routines you keep. You know I'm still susceptible to anxiety and I have a tendency, when I get overwork and over, start feeling like a little more depression and I lose steam. And then I'm like I gotta check back in like sleep a little bit more, exercise a little bit, make sure my diet is the right place. You know it waves and wellness is like a journey, right, like you're gonna have time when you're like super on it and other times where you're left on, but it, I think a big part of that that becomes what's the conversation in your head? Like right, like how are you talking to yourself? Like Do a positive self talk right now? That's a hugely important thing for me is to just be Kind of checking in with myself and the people around me all the time.
Speaker 2:But I mean I I guess I am not really creative guy love building things and connecting with people and and solving problems I see in the world. You know I have like a little book full of tons of business ideas like I love business, right. So I'm always thinking about Business and problems and solutions and my mind likes that, that space, but but sometimes you know, that's my I surround myself by. I'm a dreamer, right, so dreamers aren't exactly great at getting done, so we're not very good without a team and so I'm like just trying to surround myself by all the best doers possible and support them with the resources and the business model and the bitch and each other to build stuff together.
Speaker 2:And I've been so lucky, like Jen was my very first employee and I met her in a coffee shop.
Speaker 2:I was just building our website like Square space. Here we go, so on and on is going up and I met Jen and now I got so lucky with her. She's my business partner now she owns equity in the company. She she's really the VP of operations or CEO, or whatever you want to call it at our stage and Everything goes through her and she's an incredible learner and just super curious woman and Great at solving problems and like I mean she's like, okay, I'll figure out how to build it and get, or get the people to do it, and you know, and now, now, recently, we've just been growing the org chart with a bunch of people who have been in the son of house or for a long time, but the I feel like actually I'm better and the more people I get around me, because I'm not meant to be in the door seat and meant to be in the dreamer seat, which is kind of a weird place to be in because you're like I don't even do around here.
Speaker 2:You know I look at everything and you know I handle more of the future growth of the company and partnerships and investors and franchise owners and things like that, and I just try and coach and inspire people to Reach their their highest potential yeah, I love that you.
Speaker 1:I mean you talked about just getting lucky. You know you find people but it only happens when you put in action. You know I had a mentor that life rewards, action rewards, does forward, not just dreaming. You took some type of steps to lucky, to find the folks that you have around you.
Speaker 2:When, when did you pick up that?
Speaker 1:mentor man had to be post college for me. I didn't really go through the athletic depression. I kind of found people who who had what I wanted in life and follow them. And for real that man, look like we said life and really the wars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know they. They say smart people who are learned from their mistakes, wise people learn from other people's mistakes. So I think I fit in the first bucket and you fit in the second one you know I'm I'm right in the middle Mistakes.
Speaker 1:And then you know I had people and I learned from their mistakes. Yeah also, yeah, allow them to give me the advice, and I still made the mistakes after they gave me.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, look at you. I'm definitely just the one learned the hard way. Now that I'm weathered and all I think I'm able to learn Sometimes.
Speaker 1:So one and down. Before you talked about you talked about purpose and Obviously you talk. You just talked about building that community through Sada house, through like-minded people, through going after kind of your vision, being a dreamer, and Then you talked about coaching and helping others. Is that kind of your purpose, you know? Coaching others, is that what you would say, like the root cause to everything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the biggest driver for me is to reduce human suffering.
Speaker 2:Right, and People are suffering physically and mentally all over the world and I know that access to what we do helps that and I think that if you can have relief from that, then it gives you the opportunity to make another healthy choice or make another positive change in your life.
Speaker 2:Sada house is a special place where you can like kind of Get a reset right when you do hot, cold, relax, right. That's our circuit. We say 15 minutes in the sauna, three to five minutes in the cold pool, relax and rehydrate, so your body has to fight to warm itself back up and then repeat that circuit. You do that two, three times and you just fundamentally change, right, like your nervous system loves you, yeah, your mind is happy, your body feels comfortable, you go back out into the world and you're your best, you right. And I think that that gives people opportunity to then make another good choice for their health and Be that mentally or physically right. So that drives me is that is that I Love to coach people and help people. But the biggest driver for me is to increase access to communal bathing spaces, right, so build as many facilities it, so that as many people as possible can son of a than cold plunge regularly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that man. We need you in Chicago. I already kind of I mapped out the purple neighborhood you need to go through.
Speaker 2:We're on our way, dude. I'm flying in. Tomorrow morning 7 am Teams coming in. I love that I don't. I'll ping you and tell you where we're staying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need to make something happen. I think we should do it. I would love to learn more. This is this is amazing. I got a lot out of this, this, this podcast here. Where can folks find you? And, and what about sauna house?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the sauna house is on Instagram. That's probably our biggest place. We have a huge newsletter too, so that we're very active in our newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter on sauna house calm and find us on Instagram there. My handle is Andrew and underscore Lachlan. On Instagram. I'm not super active but everybody wants me to be. I don't know what to do there. Maybe I'll have some like third-party person. You know, start posting funny stuff up there regular for me. But yeah, that's that's the best way to get in touch with the brand is is through social media or the website, and our newsletter is really happy to stay informed with what's going on in the company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was looking at the newsletter earlier and you guys have you know articles on everything. You know the differences between Steam room and sauna, you know five you know Benefits of sauna, the benefits of cold exposure and different things like that, and so, yeah, I think this is a great newsletter for folks who are looking to get Something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just natural healing right and for sure, the blog is a great place to learn if you're weight training versus endurance training. I wrote that blog. That happened early days. I wrote a blog about weight training. It's on a cold therapy and endurance training with sauna cold therapy, which a lot of your listeners might find interesting. That blog article, because you want to use these things at specific times. And, yeah, go check that out, dude. Thanks so much for having me on. This has been super fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate you. I know we had some struggles, from rescheduling to Having some technical issues, but somehow we made it work in, the timing was perfect and so you know I appreciate making it happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, last entrepreneurial tip persistence pays.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brother, any more thanks, any more pardon words you have for us at all.
Speaker 2:Oh no, everybody get out there and take a cold shower. You know it's good for the soul. I love it, all right.