Gentlemen’s Agreement 🤝🏻

I need a favor from you. Every week I spend several hours crafting this email to give you entirely for free. Banger, after banger. Except it’s not actually free.

I love doing this, but I also love seeing this grow (You might say I’m flawed. But you’re not my therapist). To keep this free it would mean the world to me, and my ego, if you shared this with just 1 person who you think would also like this.

They can subscribe using this link here 🙌🏻

Now onto the juicy stuff…

Yesterday I was leaning over a balcony watching 65 people jump into kiddie pools filled with ice, a hot tub, and then stand in a tent with a furnace it in.

If you thought that sounded fucking ridiculous, you're right. Even crazier? These people paid to do this too.

20 hours earlier I was shifting furniture around my friends backyard with my Plunge Party partner, Devin. I didn’t send out a call for volunteers early enough. I screwed us and now it was just her and I doing set-up and tear-down.

^The above clip accurately describes how we felt after that event^

I couldn’t believe that we were doing all this to pull together 65 people, just to jump into cold tubs of water on a Sunday morning.

When I tell my mom I left my job she asks me what I’m doing now. My response: “I’m figuring it out but I’m going to keep throwing these cold plunge parties in the meantime.” I think she was genuinely concerned for my mental health after that conversation. She asked her friend who also started a company to come talk some sense into me about not quitting my job. Considering where I’m at now… you can imagine how successful that conversation was.

Her and everyone else gives me the same reaction when I tell them that story. Look, I left my corporate job because I was not longer enjoying the work that I did. I was told what to do, what to build, and how to talk about it to within the company. I was in atrophy. I didn’t feel like there was creativity to learn when someone else tells you what to do and how to do it.

Meanwhile I was throwing these cold plunge parties because it felt like fun to me. I was creating something that I wanted to see exist in my city. Not for the money, I did the math (four times), it didn’t make any sense to do this.

^(beyond overused, but still hits)^

But I had fun doing it, and building this brand and community feels like a creative outlet for me. It was the first time I felt like I was creating something that was not just an experience, but art. Hear me out: every corner of this community and minute of that event I had my hands on in some way. The rubber ducks, the coffee, the partner plunge, the edgy humor, the hummus, the people.

No one is telling me what I can and can’t say, what I can and cannot do, and most importantly who can and can’t be there. The cold plunges, the messaging, the brand, the experience filters for the kind of people I want to be there. The people I want to meet in this city.

That’s why I started jumping in the San Francisco bay and inviting anyone that would join me to come. I let my freak flag fly. I showed it off publicly to become a magnet for my kind of people. Because being normal is boring. People don’t gravitate towards boring. They pay attention to “different” because it catches their attention.

What I’m doing might seem crazy.

It is.

This isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. But when people that come and try it. They freaking love this shit. Seeing that is what truly makes me happy.

So as I lean over that balcony hearing people yell as they enter cold water, the hiss of the espresso machine, and the laughter of 65 people in a backyard at 11:30 on Sunday morning… It’s makes the manual labor, lack of sleep, and all the money I have sunk into this fucking worth it.

Building this community has been hard and it’s about to get even harder as I ramp this up to every other weekend. But honestly, I am so unbelievably proud of what I have built.

I’m letting my freak flag fly. I’m attracting my kind of people. And its working.

I found my freaks. I’m so glad you’re here.

Jared

I Dig So You Don’t Have To

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