A $20 million loss and addiction recovery turned into emotional health and a business success. Transcript of the interview with Robbie Bent, Co-Founder and CEO of Othership for The Failure Factor Podcast.

Megan Bruneau: Robbie, welcome to the show. It’s so good to have you here. And for those who don’t know, what is Othership?

Robbie Bent: Thank you.

Oh, it’s so hard to explain. We’ve always struggled. We’ve changed our tagline many times. It’s just something that you really need to feel. But in its most simple form, it’s a sauna and ice bath space for human beings to feel good now, like this instant. And in its most complicated form, it has a lot of the hallmarks of a new religion.

Othership: More Than a Sauna and Ice Bath

Robbie Bent: I just wanted to create something for two main purposes. One was to allow people to process their emotions. And so there’s a ton of research. One, there’s been an explosion in health over the past five years and people really wanting to be preventative about their health and healthspan. And so you’ve seen the rise of, you know, Andrew Huberman and people like that.

Now we’re also starting to see a lot of research around the importance of emotional health. So, Doctor Huberman has some podcasts on gratitude and the impact of having a gratitude practice for a couple of minutes a day, can have the same impact as exercise and sleep. And these things have been very difficult to quantify in the past.

At the same time, post-Covid, you have people talking about mental health in the open, which wasn’t always common. So I think there’s this idea that’s coming that we’re in the very first innings of—that processing your emotions, just feeling them in your body, is very important. And that’s traditionally what a religion would allow you to do. And then the other is this loneliness epidemic that we’re facing, and it’s the idea that you can process your emotions, but then also have a place to do that with others, to make friends, to be connected. So we’re kind of combining those two things. And, you know, it didn’t really start as a sauna and ice bath space.

It was a community space to allow you to process your emotions and become friends. And so when I say it’s a sauna and ice bath space, that’s what people understand and what they’re coming for initially and what they see online. But what they’re getting is learning about the importance of processing emotions in their body, and then also doing that with a group of friends. And really, you know, we’ve also experimented with the tagline “Space for Transformation” because that’s what is happening for people is they’re transforming their life.

Megan Bruneau: That’s, I think, a very accurate tagline. And I think in many situations that’s hyperbolic or not appropriate. But given my experience with Othership, I was like, oh shit, this is transformative. And you’re certainly speaking my language. I mean, I’m a therapist and executive coach and not only teach my clients about the power of sitting with and moving emotions through our body.

But of course, you know, I write and speak about that. And I’m so excited that that’s becoming more mainstream. And I think you’re absolutely right that this health and wellness narrative has been shifting more from, okay, everything’s about physical health and tracking and all of these markers of health that we might look at that are more objective, to this more emotional health, which actually is so interconnected with our physical health. Right? Like, we know if we’re more healthy emotionally, then we’re going to be healthier physically as well.

The Waves Driving the Wellness Movement

Robbie Bent: It’s just it’s not there yet to market it. So what we found is there’s kind of a few megatrends. And the first was just sauna and ice baths for health. And so that has been beaten to death but still takes 20 years for a trend to develop. And Pilates is in like year 20 and is exploding. And so sauna and ice baths are in, you know, maybe year 3 or 4, but it’s very clear there’s a ton of health benefits for both of these. And a lot of people are coming for that because they’ve heard it on Huberman or Rogan or Tim Ferriss. Yeah. Rhonda Patrick, Susanna Soberg, all these different longevity doctors, performance coaches are talking about the benefits.

Then there’s wave two, which is kind of happening really this year, which is just a huge decrease in drinking, especially among 20 to 30-year-olds. And I think once you put on the Oura or the Whoop and start tracking your health and you see what happens when you drink, there’s like a movement to, “Oh, maybe I’ll cut down from three nights of drinking to one,” and there’s a huge, especially in New York, massive interest in new ways to socialize. And so we’re seeing that. We started this sauna rave with a brand called Daybreaker. It’s called Heat Wave.

Megan Bruneau: We had Radha on the podcast a while back.

Robbie Bent: She’s just amazing. And so they brought in Blond:ish and a bunch of DJs. And so it’s a new way to party. And we talked about emotional health, and part of that is play and dancing. And so most people feel uncomfortable dancing in their bodies. But you go to the space, you use the hot and cold to break free and to kind of play.

And then the third one, which you’re super familiar with, is emotional health and the idea that you need to, or are serviced by, feeling into your emotions, using sounds to release them, and then sharing in a group and being witnessed.

The “Trojan Horse” Strategy for Mainstreaming Emotional Wellness

Robbie Bent: And the problem is that is very hard to sell. And so our top customers that are most—that really see the brand as a part of their life—are the ones that are going to Love and Kindness class, Gratitude class, Acceptance class. But most people don’t feel like they need that. And so it’s very hard to market. You might be able to market to people, “Hey, are you going through a breakup? Are you facing imposter syndrome?” with very specific challenges they may be at a point in their life, but it’s hard to market that because it’s a thing that people don’t know they need.

And so the hot and cold and the place feeling cool is kind of a Trojan horse to bring the 99% of people who aren’t doing therapy into the space. They think they’re coming for something else, and all of a sudden they’re feeling their emotions and like, “Whoa, what just happened?” You know? And so it’s sort of filling a gap like religion used to do that. And this idea of going to church and legitimately praying for people and having these good thoughts. And there’s a big gap in society now because that’s not as popular as it was.

Megan Bruneau: I love your reference to the Trojan Horse. I mean, I often say this podcast and the writing for Forbes or speaking about business and psychology is really just a Trojan horse for people to learn about their emotions. This emotional awareness is so key to being able to process them. I mean, we have to have that emotional lexicon and be able to sit with the discomfort in our body to be able to move that stuff through. And so when I hear you, like, sort of marketing emotional regulation, most people don’t even know what that means. Kind of helping people recognize, okay, well, there’s all this research and Huberman behind it, hot and cold or the contrast therapy and the breathwork and whatever else. And this is all going to make you feel better or make you, I don’t know, healthier in whatever way is one way to be able to get people in the door. And then they have that experience and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t quite name what this difference is here, but something feels really good and I want to come back.”

From Vipassana to Accessible Transformation

Robbie Bent: Yeah. Look at Vipassana retreats. I think 20 years ago, maybe 1 in 100 might know what that is. And now there’s like a six-month waiting list for any of them—sold out with a massive waiting list. It’s another form of intensive group therapy, a seven-day, 100-hour deep dive—sold out. You have dark retreats in caves are sold out. It’s like plant medicine retreats sold out. So they’re growing rapidly, but it’s still like the adoption is so low from a mainstream standpoint. But I’m very excited, optimistic because fitness in 2009, there was no such thing as boutique fitness. SoulCycle didn’t exist. You know, you were maybe, “Hey, I’m an athlete, so I’m training,” or “I’m a bodybuilder at Gold’s Gym.”

And people don’t remember, fitness now is probably a hundred times the size of what it was less than 20 years ago. So I really think… I can have these magic moments sometimes where I see someone, and I’m sure you do also in your practice, where you see someone share something human and it just makes you… it opens up such feeling. And so when I see that happen, I’m like, okay, obviously everybody is going to want to experience this. So I’m very excited for what a world might look like where people, the same way they do fitness are like, “I’m going to work on my emotional…” whether it’s through therapy or dance or an Othership class. But weekly, working through that stuff I think is really important.

Megan Bruneau: I want to get to your story and how you came to all of this. I know it’s so powerful, but before we do, just reflecting on some of the points you made there, I did a Vipassana, oh gosh, I think I was like 23, so 15, 16 years ago.

Robbie Bent: You were a pioneer.

Megan Bruneau: Oh yeah. Yeah, it was a very dark time in my life. I was the youngest person there by far, going through a breakup thinking, “Oh, this is what I need to do. I need to go sit and be with myself.” And I would say it was incredibly powerful, and I did ultimately have a positive experience, but I don’t think I’d do it again. It’s sort of how I feel about… maybe I would do Ayahuasca, I’ve done it a couple of times. Maybe I would do it again. But some of these things that you’re mentioning, I think they’re kind of one-and-done for a lot of people. It’s like, okay, you go, you get the t-shirt, you have the experience.

Some of it’s ego, like, “Can I really do this? Should I tell people about it?” All of that. But I think what I so appreciate about Othership, and I’d love for us to actually walk through what happens in a class was… I was like, “Oh, I would definitely come back here.” And it’s not as much of a commitment for an hour and a half, or what is the length of a class?

Robbie Bent: 75 minutes.

Megan Bruneau: Yes, a 75-minute class. So it’s not as much of a commitment. And you can kind of build it. It’s not taking ten days off work and going and doing a Vipassana. The ROI for me emotionally felt much higher. And maybe that was because there was a social element. I mean, Vipassana I actually found very isolating because you’re not even able to make eye contact with people for ten days. But it seems to me like the retention rate essentially would be higher for something like Othership. I both appreciated the outcome of Othership, but I also appreciated the experience, and I think that’s important because even boutique fitness classes, there are certain ones I love, but some I’m like, “I don’t enjoy that enough. I don’t think I need to go back and do that again,” because the experience just felt sort of masochistic. Whereas Othership, my experience at least, was, “Oh, there are moments where this is uncomfortable, but ultimately throughout the entire process, I’m experiencing those releases, I’m experiencing those downloads. I’m experiencing the moment of social connection.” So it was both the process and the outcome I really appreciated.

Robbie Bent: It’s awesome.

Inside an Othership Class: Designing for Safety and Experience

Megan Bruneau: Alright. So let’s talk about the class then. It’s so experiential. And I imagine that’s a challenge as you said for marketing. I didn’t really know what to experience when I was going into it. But I walked out of there being like, “Yes, this is…” I’m still curious how you’re going to make this work economically, and we’ll get into that. But just for listeners who have never been before, hopefully they will go to a class in New York or Toronto or in other locations. What do they experience from the moment they walk in to the moment they leave? Kind of a 3 to 4-minute recap?

Robbie Bent: Yeah. So there’s a combination of a large number of modalities. So it started in my backyard, which we’ll get into, just in a sauna and a horse trough, and then in a garage. And just sort of by happenstance, us testing using a sauna and ice bath with our friends. And at first, it was meant to be very clinical and science-based. So, “Hey, you’re coming. Like, did you know this is going to reduce inflammation? It’s going to improve your immune system.” And what we quickly realized was people didn’t want that. The ice bath is very hard. They didn’t care about the science. They wanted to have an experience. And so we just started combining a lot of things. Othership is founded by myself, my wife, another couple, and a fifth co-founder. We’re all very close friends.

Megan Bruneau: And it’s the first company I’ve ever heard of with five founders, by the way.

Robbie Bent: And two are two couples. For sure. I don’t think that exists in the world. So it’s a very family-driven and friendship-driven business. And it was just something we were doing for fun. And the goal was really taking a lot of this stuff… My partners are facilitators and facilitated retreats, as you mentioned, like dark retreats. I was a drug addict, and so I used these to help me change my behavior. And so we were just experimenting from things that we liked from the retreats we went on in a more accessible way. And I think it does two things. One, you mentioned these retreats are just not accessible, like they’re five grand. They take ten days. You talk about Vipassana and I would tell my friends, like, “I could never do that. That’s insane.” You know? “But how did you change your life?” And then the second is, once you’ve done that thing, you come back and you’re ready for change, but then you’re in your same friends, same job, same family. It’s hard to make change in real life. And so there has to be a touchpoint in the city that you frequent to make behavioral change over time. So we’re thinking about all these things and it had to be fun. It couldn’t be just prescriptive and boring. And so there’s elements of entertainment involved as well.

This thing that we started in the garage, we opened during Covid, our first studio, self-funded it, and people were like, “You guys are crazy.” It was during Covid. We signed the lease and the landlord was like, “I don’t understand this at all.” But we did have a group of a thousand people coming into our space in the garage, and we kind of saw these people in a group of five crying during these mini-classes. I’m like, “Okay, that’s really interesting. There’s some energy here.” And so we opened this first space and the idea was always around the classes as the staple. And even the classes have evolved over time. But the idea was that you come, you sit down. The space had to feel very safe because we want you to process emotion.

A lot of people are uncomfortable in their bathing suit. So we designed a very specific lighting palette. We tested probably 50 different lighting palettes to make sure that it indicates safety when you’re inside. So the shading and the way the lights are displayed really make you feel safe. There are no sightlines in the space, so it’s not like a giant room that you feel like all these people are looking at you. And the towels are custom designed to a very specific size so that you can wrap around your body if you have body image issues. We’re trying to make you feel more comfortable in a bathing suit. We have specific bathing suits that you can wear that cover up your whole body. So the idea is that we want it to be accessible to everybody.

Crafting an Accessible, Secular Wellness Experience

Robbie Bent: We’re very careful about not using any religious, spiritual, or energetic terms. So everything is accessible to everyone. It’s kind of like letting you have the experience yourself without putting much on top of it. All the classes are designed around emotions, which are universal. You can’t argue with gratitude and acceptance and anger release, and love and kindness, and these different emotions that are universal to the human experience.

And so when you go in, we really also wanted it to feel like a hospitality-driven experience. Traditionally, fitness has not been hospitality-driven. So we took a lot—we did training with Danny Meyer and Will Guidara and some of the best restaurateurs in the world, and a lot of our staff comes from the restaurant industry.

When you come in, there are specific questions we’re training our staff to ask to try to make you feel safe at the end of the day, to try to make you feel like, “Hey, this is my home. This is a place where I can actually go into my feelings in a safe environment.” That’s why we have two to five guides on versus a single teacher. So it’s indicating safety for the customer.

A Walkthrough of the Othership Class

Robbie Bent: You come in, you come into the tea room, you’ll have a complimentary tea. You’ll be waiting, hanging out with other guests. A guide will come in and give you an intro of safety in the space and what the class is about. You all move into the sauna, and the sauna is like a mix of a Cirque du Soleil-style show that you’re watching with all these different modalities—towel waving, essential oils on the ice for different aromatherapy that sort of matches the theme of the class.

And then you’re also participating. You’re watching the show, but then there are guided visualizations. You might be going to your child at home; you might be thinking about somebody you want to forgive. There are different things that come from cognitive behavioral therapy and other different therapy techniques, different questioning and visualizations. And then you’re part of it. And then also you’re having a state change. So generally, if someone comes into the class and is skeptical, like, “Why am I here? My friend dragged me. I don’t want to do this loving kindness class,” two segments in, after a bit of breathwork and potentially some movement, your nervous system state starts to change, and you’re more pliable to then go into these emotions.

That’s segment one, is the show, this experience of shifting your state. And then everyone does something hard together, which is the ice bath, that most people are doing for their first time when they begin and they’re afraid. And so that is an entire guided experience. Something we kind of pioneered was having two people to one ice bath together.

It’s a bit uncomfortable, like, “Hey, this is a stranger in my space,” and everyone’s doing it together. And what that does just creates positive peer pressure that I’m going to push myself beyond where I think I can go. And by putting people into this kind of hard and fearful experience, you’re creating trust and you’re sinking the nervous systems of the group.

The Power of Integration and Shared Vulnerability

Robbie Bent: So when people come out after that, they’re usually elated. And it’s that moment when you capitalize to have people share. Because prior to that, in boutique fitness, you may go, and it’s pretty unlikely you’re going to end up chatting with somebody. You might, and it happens sometimes if you go frequently, but for me personally, if I’m going to a yoga class, it’s usually a solitary experience that I’m kind of finished with the class and I’m leaving.

This is kind of the opposite. We’re trying to create moments to see someone else share, to be human together. And so in that second part of the class, it’s the integration side. And this comes from group therapy and psychedelic work. And it’s just the idea that, hey, we’re going to let people share about what came up today.

Most people don’t feel comfortable sharing in a group, especially for their first time. But that’s okay. It’s just optional. Five or six people will share. And then that moment is extremely powerful because you see somebody saying something that you might feel too. “I’m going through a breakup,” or “I’m going through loss,” or “I feel great today. I just met a new partner,” or “I have imposter syndrome at work.” And I think that’s the real moment. Like, that’s a special thing that creates the real community. Without the hot and cold, I think it’s hard to get people to come across town to look into each other’s eyes and go through a loving kindness meditation.

So it’s kind of a platform that you need to get people to use the space. So that’s it. It’s some type of entertainment experience to shift your state, a difficult experience that’s done together, and then a group share. And then after, people have 15 minutes. So if you heard a share, we’re hoping there’s some serendipity there where you can potentially meet somebody new, talk to them. It kind of opens the door to create a social connection. Maybe you do a second ice bath, maybe grab a tea, but that’s it.

Classes for Every Emotional Level

Robbie Bent: And then the classes range. Some are very emotionally driven, but a lot of times people aren’t ready for that. So if you’re a first-timer, have never done any emotional work, and you go to a loving kindness class where you have to look a stranger in the eyes, it’s like, “I will never go back to this place again.”

So there are also classes that are a nervous system reset, not emotionally driven at all. It’s mostly techniques, breathing, the physiological sigh, different forms of tapping—things that you can do to get into a parasympathetic state. Some classes are more entertainment-based. There’s one called Sound Immersion, which has group humming and a performance. And so, they vary in three categories—up, down, all around—based on what people are looking for.

And we found that that is a really good way. As people start, they may be doing a nervous system reset. They kind of hear about it. They slowly graduate to the classes that are in the full dark with screaming. They’re then sharing. And, six months later it’s, “Hey, I’ve made a couple of friends here. I’m sharing content consistently in class. I’m going to the emotional classes, and I’ve processed emotions. And now maybe I’m interested in that retreat that formerly seemed like something I didn’t need.”

A Personal Experience: Combining Luxury and Humility

Megan Bruneau: I think that was a great description. Thank you. And just a couple of things from my experience: the space is stunning. You walk in and I was like, I know you had a very extensive build-out that was worth it. I think there’s this luxury experience of going in there. But then also it’s such a powerful, connected experience, and it’s rare that you can combine luxury and humility. Those things are often oxymoronic. And so to be able to walk in and be like, “Wow, this is a luxury experience,” and then, “Hey, here we all are, all different shapes and sizes in our bathing suits, sitting here, some of us having really emotional experiences and sharing afterwards,” is super powerful. And I think that combination actually does make people feel safe. Like, “Okay, I can trust I’m in good hands here. I can trust the brand, and now I can allow them to take me through this experience.”

Another important thing that you didn’t mention that I know is intuitive for you, but maybe not to listeners, is that there are no phones. And when we are not on our phones, it’s amazing how much more likely you are to talk to someone. I think about years ago when we used to take flights by ourselves and sit next to strangers, you would usually talk to that person. Certainly right off the bat, I was sitting in the tea room and I was like, I’ll just start talking to the person next to me. And maybe I was primed because I knew I was having this experience and wanting to look through a critical, experiential eye to understand what the Othership experience was.

But I had a really nice chat with the guy next to me and learned that he had gotten the unlimited membership because it made him feel so good and helped to manage his ADHD. And then going into the sauna, as you said, it is theatrical. And these guides who are so well-rehearsed, and the scripts and the towel weaving, and they’re throwing these giant snowballs of aromatherapy… them just being able to feel and experience all of that is very sensorial in every way.

The class I went to was one on acceptance. Listeners all know that I lost my mom last year suddenly, and it’s been a journey for sure. And I found myself coming up with a lot of emotion. I feel emotional talking about it now. You know, those are very complicated relationships. So I was thinking, gosh, this is for someone like me who does a lot of yoga and is very open about their emotions and does a lot of processing… still, of course, is so valuable. But I can only imagine for individuals who don’t have those other opportunities or outlets to be able to move through whatever they’re feeling and have those releases, especially when it comes to grief or trauma or anger, like you said. And yeah, by the time I was finished, I was like, “Wow, I just feel really good.”

Healing Through Witnessing and Combating Shame

Megan Bruneau: Fortunately, no one did share in my setting, which I was hoping they would, but something I so appreciate about that, that I want to name… the way that I practice or the lens through which I view most mental health challenges, addictions, anything like that is shame. It is shame that is at the core of our need to cope in maladaptive ways or unhelpful ways, and shame isolates us further and thrives in secrecy. And something I was excited about interviewing you, Robbie, is because you said to me, “Nothing is off limits,” and it’s rare that I get that kind of welcoming invitation to an interview, especially one of this nature, because people still have shame, understandably, about their stories and their experiences.

And I think you’re a walking advertisement for the brand that you have clearly worked through a lot of your shame around your story, maybe all of it or most of it. And the way to do that, or one way to do that, is to be witnessed—exactly what you’re talking about with the integration piece. So I think that was so powerful.

I was in New York for ten years. I went to boutique fitness classes religiously, and I don’t think I ever had an experience where there was an element of not only like, “Hey, let’s have a moment of sharing here,” but it was really built into the class. It was like, “Hey, maybe at the end we’re going to say something,” or at the beginning, it’s like, “Say hello to your neighbor and ask them one question or something.” But it was so superficial. And having that group sharing, I think, again, even though I didn’t experience it personally, I can only imagine how transformative it is for people who are not seeing themselves in others and think they’re so alone and they’re broken, and whatever they’re going through makes them flawed. And then they experience someone else being like, “Hey, I’m also going through this.” And whether they connect or not after the class, just knowing they’re not alone in that is so healing.

Robbie Bent: Yeah, I mean, that’s just something that wasn’t invented. It was just something we found important based on a lot of men’s work, Zoom circles, ayahuasca retreats. You know, they all have this sharing component. And the idea was that even sometimes more so than the experience itself, the sharing is where you pick up learnings. You feel like, “Hey, I’m not crazy.” You know, it is a bummer nobody shared in that class. That class is the most emotional of all of them. Acceptance. It’s really heavy. It’s like, “Hey, we’re going into some difficult feelings.” Some people will go to that class, and would hate it, you know, and they’re just not ready.

Building a Polarizing (and Beloved) Brand

Robbie Bent: And it’s interesting because you say luxury, and it is luxury in terms of the materials and the components. But in some ways, we chose no shoes. There are no slippers, there are no robes. And so people are like, “Oh, this is gross.” And we chose that because we wanted you to feel the river stone tile on your bare feet. And we didn’t want shoes to junk up the space. But in some ways, people are like, “Oh, that’s not luxury at all.” And then it’s very crowded. And how we offer a really accessible price point—it’s not low cost, but it’s very accessible for what it is, especially in comparison to other spots in New York. You know, it’s like 30% of the cost of some of the higher-end spas. And we do that by having a lot of people. And so some people are like, “Oh my God, I hate this.”

So it’s a very polarizing thing. I remember we had the shares that used to be before class, and that really didn’t work well because you’re coming into something; you need to give them the state change before you’re asking for something. And I remember my friends were just like, “Bro, no one’s going to open up and share.” And like, this macho… you know, and still to this day, people will be like… I remember there’s someone trying to open something in New York that’s kind of a rip-off, but he’s like, “Oh, I’m going to open it, but without the Othership, without all the weird culty stuff.” And it’s like, no, the sharing is what makes the experience, you know? And even if nobody shared, it’s still the idea that there is a space to do that. And normally it’s like three to four that you’ll see. And for me, that’s my favorite part. I think it’s about trying to make something that means something to people. And you have to have people hate it, or else you’re just kind of in the middle, or else nobody’s going to love it.

Megan Bruneau: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Onsite, but I’m in Nashville now, and it’s a very world-renowned recovery organization or retreat center, I guess. I checked it out recently and it’s very based on sharing. And that’s where the transformation happens, as we experience ourselves through other stories and, again, feel less alone in them.

So I think the sharing, if I were going to theorize on the mechanisms by which healing is happening through an experience like Othership, I would think it would be the nervous system regulation and being able to process emotions, but also the social connection piece. Being able to feel connected to others, not just in the sense of we’re all in the room and going through this experience together, but connecting to others, meaning like, “Oh, I feel less shame about myself for being in this experience together,” right? That really is where healing happens. And that’s why group therapy is so powerful. So the idea of there being people like, “Oh, this is not for me,” I would imagine that that would be expected. You think of certain brands that maybe have had their heyday and since fallen from grace. Some of the things that reminded me of my experience were like Bikram yoga, which was again 20 years ago at this point, but was such a cult following at the time, or SoulCycle or Barry’s Bootcamp or some of these places where some people go there like, “I’m never coming back here again. I hated that so much.” And then there are people who are like, “I’m going to get the unlimited pass. I’m going to be there every single day.” And there really is almost this pedestalizing of the instructors or this sort of almost religious following. Right?

Navigating Emotional Health Trends and Competition

Megan Bruneau: So how would you compare yourself to some of those brands that I just mentioned? And do you have to anticipate there sort of being that arc of people who are very interested in this for a period of time, but then having to navigate, how can we make this trend stay when wellness trends do kind of inevitably rise and fall?

Robbie Bent: I think about that a lot. And for any consumer brands, you face waves and cycles. And it’s just like most of those brands… well, one, Barry’s is still quite successful. SoulCycle sold, and I think when a brand sells to a big company, it’s very difficult to retain innovation and its soul. And then Bikram had a whole bunch of interpersonal challenges that weren’t related to the business. So, I do think, though, it’s important for any brand to build a cult following where people have a real emotional connection to what you’re doing, good or bad. I think it’s essential. You know, we had somebody the other day who proposed to his girlfriend in the space because it was that important to them. And we’re very much trying to deliver very emotional moments and leaning into that.

Even when people… it hurts my feelings. I read the consumer feedback, and negative feedback gets sent to my phone just so I’m up to date on what people like and what they don’t like. And so I’ll read thousands of pieces of feedback a month. You know, some of the feedback, it just hurts. It’s like, we’ve put in tens of thousands of hours into the design of every little item. And I’ve done thousands of classes, and when somebody’s like, “Hey, I hate this,” it hurts, you know, it’s hard. And it was really hard at first. But it’s kind of like, “Okay, that’s just what it is.” And I’m getting way more used to it. But, yeah, at first it was challenging.

But now I’m leaning more into just delivering for the people who love it and thinking about why, and then also thinking about how deep can you impact a single person. And so we’ll share these kinds of experiences. We have an email list called The Daily Happy, and all the best testimonials, whether they come from email to me or on Instagram or whatever, we’ll take screenshots and we’ll post them, and then we email them to the whole team. So every day you’re seeing one of these transformational stories and just kind of like, “Okay, put out all the noise and just focus on how deep can you impact somebody’s life.” And that seems to me to be something that always makes me feel really good when I’m a bit nervous or unsure.

Megan Bruneau: And that’s such a powerful leadership move to show that sort of intrinsic reinforcement. Yes, we can pay people money, and that’s obviously a form of reinforcement. But really, so many of us are mission-driven nowadays and want to see the impact we’re having on others. So I think those are excellent practices.

The Founder’s Passion and Personal Connection

Robbie Bent: I really feel for founder-led brands, you have to be experts in the product and experience you’re trying to build. And myself and my co-founders, we’ve been using bathhouses forever. We’ve been to hundreds, you know? So it’s just really that is my obsession and my wife’s obsession. We do it every day. We got engaged in our sauna in our garage. We did our gender reveal in the original Othership. So it just is something that’s really, really part of our life.

Megan Bruneau: Another thing that came up for me there while you were sharing all that, and just speaking of Bikram yoga, I know that they did trademark their experience and that was very controversial given it was hot yoga. But I’m curious, with all of the copycats, I suppose, or those who are doing things similar to Othership out there, do you guys have any desire to or are you planning on trademarking your process at all?

Building a Defensible ‘Hard to Copy’ Business

Robbie Bent: No, I don’t think it’s that valuable. I don’t even know that you can actually legally defend that. So for me, from learnings in brick and mortar, it’s just: build the hardest thing possible, control the experience, make it incredible, treat your staff really well, and ensure they’re mission-driven and just really care. And just build the best thing. And it’s hard, you know? There’s five of us. It’s my fourth or fifth startup. My partner had a number of restaurants and a PR company. We personally put millions of dollars in and we’ve taken $9 million of debt. We’re all working 70-hour weeks. We’ve been doing it for six years. We built everything internally. So it’s just like, okay, you want to compete with us?

I can’t… you know, it’s f*cking hard.

It’s also just that most of the job is very unglamorous, like arguing with landlords, arguing with construction workers, getting personally sued, dealing with a slip and fall. There’s just a million things. It’s very difficult. And then, you know, on a Saturday, I’ll have 2,000 people come through the doors. And so of those 2,000, there’s going to be 20 issues. So it’s just hard and it never gets easy. It’s not a piece of software and there are always people involved. So I think the best way to deal with competition is just to really, really care about what you’re doing and then keep going.

And also for brick and mortar, it takes so long. You know, it literally takes… Equinox is almost 40 years old. Whole Foods is 44 years old. Canyon Ranch is 49 years old. All the best companies in the space… there are very few under-ten-year successes. In boutique fitness, there’s really only Solidcore, and it’s still like 12 to 15 years, and then SoulCycle. And so I don’t think there are many people who want to take on that level of challenge over that time period because it’s just not a good way to make money. It only makes sense if you are obsessed with it.

The Emotional Toll of Competition

Robbie Bent: I definitely, though, have had anger about people. My mind state is… I lost my company, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. But I was broke, you know, and I really cared about money a lot. It was what I equated with success. And so, you know, competitors coming with our same idea, maybe they hired some of our guides, and I was furious, like super angry. I’ve never really built something that people would want to copy, so I didn’t have experience with it. And I know the right decision is just like… there’s this Jimmy Iovine quote—he uses a lot of profanity—but he’s just like, you know, “put the blinders on and just go.” But when they’re coming, every time, it sits in my body. I would hear about one, and obviously, our investors or customers would say, “Did you see this? Did you see that?”

And so it’s hard. It was really hard for me to deal with. And it was an immature part of me that gets scared and then I’m like, “Oh my God, are they going to take our business? Are we going to fail?” And there’s a part of me, it’s really hard to deal with that kind of stuff. So, now I try. I’m just like, “Okay, just be the best. Don’t focus on it.” As best as I can. But that’s been the challenge for the last year and a half.

An IFS Perspective on Fear and Motivation

Megan Bruneau: I can imagine. Well, I know you’re a fan of IFS, Internal Family Systems, and we could argue that that’s the protective part of you that, by having that fear, motivates you that much more to just do the best that you can possibly do and create a product that few people can replicate, if anyone. But I can imagine that’s a lot of anxiety to live with. And feeling betrayed, I imagine at times as well, right? Especially if your directors are being poached, or if it seems like a person came in with good intentions and ultimately copied your concept. I mean, there’s a violation there that puts you on your heels.

Robbie Bent: Yeah. But there’s just nothing you can do. And I don’t think people really want to hear about it. There are other brands I know where the founder’s still complaining about it 20 years later in his training. And it’s just… I think at the end of the day… So I’m just, “Hey, this made me angry because I’m afraid.” It’s a natural human feeling. But I’m also not focusing on this anymore. I’m just going to be as good as we can.

Shifting from Scarcity to Abundance

Robbie Bent: And I think there’s a massive market. I think the answer probably is that there’s room for hundreds of these. And then also, I heard Tony Robbins—and I’m not elevated like that yet, I still have a scared little boy mentality at times. You know, I’m getting… it’s my work. But I heard Tony Robbins just say, “Yeah, there’s millions of people doing personal work now. And I started, and all these people are doing great. The world’s a way better place because of me.” And I thought that was really cool. The vibe wasn’t like, “Oh, they’re competitors.” Just like, “We’re all in it.” You know? So he’s very confident in what he’s done. And so that’s kind of the energy. My wife has that energy where she doesn’t care and doesn’t even listen, but I’m more like the scared one. I think as we get more successful, I’ll be less afraid.

Megan Bruneau: Yeah. I think that quote, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” will apply that much more when you feel that much more confident. But of course, when we’re coming at it from that more scarcity mindset, which is difficult to shift out of when you’re not quite yet in a place where you’re like, “Okay, we’ve nailed this. We have X number of customers. Everything’s good. We’re running a well-oiled machine.” At that point, you can stand where Tony Robbins is, but I would imagine Tony Robbins 20 years ago wouldn’t have been saying the same thing.

Journey into Entrepreneurship: A Backstory

Megan Bruneau: Your story—I love that you are open about previous failures that you’ve experienced. You said you had four or five startups. I didn’t realize that. I just knew of the one. We can maybe focus on the one that it sounds like was the most formative in your journey. But take us back. It sounds like you worked in hedge funds or investment banking. About how old were you when you were in that?

Robbie Bent: Yeah, so I graduated from university business school. And in business school, the most competitive jobs were in I-banking. I did an internship; I didn’t even know what investment banking was. And I was just like, “Oh, well, that one pays the most. And that’s where you make a lot of money. So I’m going to try and do that.” That was as simple as it was. It was like, “Hey, I just want to be rich and I’m going to work hard to do it.”

Megan Bruneau: Just typical, especially for men, right? Young men, you’re like, “Hey, how do I feel powerful and in control and be desirable?” And all those things… “Money.”

Robbie Bent: Exactly, or being desirable. Feeling like I’d make my parents proud. You know, they also had a scarcity mindset. My mom kind of drilled into me like, “I need money to be safe,” and “I need to achieve to be loved.” So those were my two driving forces. So I worked really hard in school. At 20 years old, I moved to L.A. I worked at this investment bank, like 90-hour weeks, but it wasn’t a tier-one investment bank. It was like a second-tier one. So I didn’t get the job I wanted. That was super stressful.

Early Substance Use and the Drive for Connection

Robbie Bent: I love drinking and I love drugs, and I always have. And I love stimulation. I have ADHD, and the only thing I can do to stop my mind is extreme sports or a cold bath, or now the addiction is entrepreneurship.

Megan Bruneau: When did the drinking and drugs start? Was that like a high school thing? College?

Robbie Bent: Yeah, like high school. In high school, just smoking weed, but I always did well in school. But I would get high every day, drinking on the weekends heavily. And it was fun, you know? It didn’t seem to me like a problem. And then in university, I got into cocaine use and heavy weekends, but still, it seemed normal at the school I went to, and it was kind of fun, partying.

Megan Bruneau: It didn’t feel at that time like you were trying to numb difficult emotions. It was more like, “Hey, I want to have peak experiences. This is how I can act… this is a social thing, everybody’s doing it.”

Robbie Bent: It was both. So that, and also probably numbing. That was one of the ways I could get my brain to slow down and I could find connection. And so I think there was just a lack of connection to myself. I’m a very self-critical person. Like even now… I was saying here, you were mentioning therapy before, and I was like, I did a boxing session this morning and that was like a therapy session right there. In between the rounds, he’s just asking me questions, and I was like, “Man, I’m really lonely right now.” But I have trouble just on a Saturday sitting there, and I’ll start being like, “You need to do this and you need to do that. You’re not good enough here. I’ll get this, do this.” Just this task list continuously makes it hard for me to just be a normal human.

The Isolating Nature of the Inner Critic

Megan Bruneau: And it’s isolating. When you mentioned the loneliness piece, it’s like that critical inner voice—and my specialization is perfectionism, which is all about that and is shame-driven for sure—but ultimately that does isolate us because it’s like, “Well, why would you go connect and play and have fun and be present when your mind is constantly telling you you should be working to be enough and to be loved?” So it just isolates you, takes you out of the present, and forces you to be working, essentially.

Robbie Bent: Yeah. Which is a problem for me that I’m working on, because my son is two and a half now, and it’s hard for me to wake up on Sunday and just go spend six hours, and I’ll be in these negative ruminations in my mind. So I’m trying to work on how I can be more present and feel less guilty about not working. And my dad has worked really hard. My grandpa always worked really hard. He was an entrepreneur. So it’s in our DNA, I think. So I think why I like partying so much is because that voice would stop. I would do drugs, and it would actually slow me down. And so it was a way I could find connection through this. So it was definitely fun, but it was a way that I could not be self-conscious, not be critical.

The Rise and Fall of a First Startup

Robbie Bent: So that went on. I did the finance job. I then worked at a hedge fund, which was also a second-tier hedge fund, and it imploded during the credit crisis in 2008, in the banking crisis. So I came in one day and I’m like, “Hey, guess what?” You know, the job is gone. I didn’t really know what to do. I was like, “Okay, well, I kind of failed at this.” I would have nightmares, like, “I’m not good enough. I’m never going to get a job in finance again.” My boss would be throwing staplers at me. I was very scared when I was younger, scared to even talk to my bosses.

Megan Bruneau: Is that still a familiar feeling now? Like, can you access that in your body when you think about that?

Robbie Bent: Not as much. In this job particularly… well, one, I worked at Ethereum early on. I worked in crypto and that’s where I started to build confidence. And now I’ve just asked for so much help and failed so much that I’m less… I used to be, if you would ask me to call someone to ask them what they think about something, I would be so nervous. And even to go to a job interview, I would be terrified. Like shaking, so scared. And those feelings, I guess from exposure therapy, they just don’t exist anymore in the same way.

I had that job and I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid, like, “How do I get a new job?” So luckily, I still wanted to be rich at the time. So I moved back from L.A. to Toronto and I met a technical co-founder. And they had this product, it was like a roaming solution idea. And so we joined forces because I thought, “Oh, well, I know how to raise money. I have a network. I’ve done this, building financial models and pitching investors, and I know how to talk this language.” And so we ended up raising a lot of money for that company and built this hardware solution called Roamly.

Megan Bruneau: How much did you raise?

Robbie Bent: 20 million. Just over 20 million over a period of four years. And total disaster. The product was never really working, but we kind of had a way to make it seem like it was working initially.

Megan Bruneau: And so what was the goal of the product? I mean, you mentioned a roaming solution, but just for people who don’t know what that is.

Robbie Bent: Yeah. So basically, if you’re in the U.S. and you’ve used Google Fi, how it works is wherever you travel, they have deals with all the carriers and they’ll provision you a SIM card locally and just charge you one rate. So it’s like a global SIM card. That was the idea. You would put this piece of hardware into your phone. When you travel to the UK, we would have a deal in the UK. We would, maybe it’s 30 cents a minute, for example, we would charge you a buck a minute, and we would take that 70% gain. And your home carrier would charge you two bucks a minute. So you’d be saving 50% to 90%. And I just didn’t know what I was doing.

We ended up hiring all these senior telecom people who had been managing… like, one guy had managed 6,000 people and worked for one of the biggest wireless carriers. And I just didn’t know, like, that will never work. All of a sudden, they’re flying first class trying to do all these big telecom deals. I thought it had to work in every phone, so we designed four different SIMs for all the different SIM cards; they weren’t standard at the time. We thought it had to work for business customers and also consumers. So we were trying to sell to corporates, but then also to Best Buy. So we just spent all this money before having one use case that worked. And I was in Toronto. I started, you know, from stress, doing drugs a lot. And that’s when it became a real problem because it was…

Megan Bruneau: Co-going with your work at that time, or was it still sort of helping you focus and connect?

Rock Bottom: Shame, Fear, and Failure

Robbie Bent: No, it was definitely not helping me focus. But I was at least going to work, but it was… I would disappear for a day or two here or there.

Megan Bruneau: Did your co-founder notice or was there any intervention?

Robbie Bent: Not really. The team at that point was so big and things were just going badly. And so I would wake up—party all week—and wake up sweating through my bedsheets and would just be like… we’re going to run out of money. Every month we were running out of money. And I just had this feeling of fear for like two years of… you know, my parents had put in a little bit of money. They’re all super wealthy. Some of my friends had invested; they all lost all their money. And I was relying on that salary to survive. And so I was so afraid, like, “I’m going to be broke again.”

When I lost my finance job, I was like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And at this point in my life, people are, you know, 28, 29, 30. A lot of people I went to business school with are crushing it. And it’s like, yeah, I’ve got 60 bucks in my bank account. I had to move back in with my parents.

Megan Bruneau: Take us back to that time for a moment, Robbie. You mentioned waking up in fear, sweating through your bedsheets. If we were to just have a visual of you at that time, what are we witnessing? What’s a moment where you’re kind of at rock bottom, at least in that sense? And what are some of the emotions? I mean, you mentioned fear, but I would imagine shame was probably very present at that time. Any other emotions that were there as well?

Robbie Bent: Yeah. I lived in this… I spent basically all my money, my entire salary. So I had a nice apartment in Toronto. I would just spend everything and I would be like, “Oh, every month I have no money in my bank account. This company is failing. It’s legitimately going to fail.” Like, “Okay, we just need to get some more investors.” And so we would… I just couldn’t see how it was going to work.

The Optimism Trap in Entrepreneurship

Megan Bruneau: How were you fundraising at that time? Were you able to sort of show up authentically and fundraise, or did it feel like you were just telling a lie, saying, “Hey, we need money because this is going to be successful,” when you were realizing it was failing at the same time?

Robbie Bent: It did have… after we had raised so much money, it didn’t feel like the early investors were going to get anything. So I felt like, hey, maybe it could work. I think a problem with entrepreneurship is being hopeful, and I’m generally pretty optimistic. It’s an optimism bias, and it’s why we made mistakes expanding Othership too quickly. It’s like I thought, “Oh, it’s only going to cost X in New York. It’s only going to take this long to ramp. Oh, based on results here…” It’s just a generally optimistic viewpoint. And if you have that across many different decision points, it compounds. And so it can lead to this thing you think is conservative is actually not a conservative estimate at all.

And so I was optimistic and hopeful. Interesting stuff happened. We had a meeting with the CEO of Skype and there were some discussions about him buying us, and we were like, “Oh my God, we’re going to be rich. I’m going to be rich.” And so excited. And then it was like, this isn’t ever going to work. And for the last year, it was… you know, we had to fire everyone. We were down to five employees. We’d raise 25 grand at a time, mostly from one of the co-founders. And it just was this feeling of… now not even paying myself anymore. I’m watching my money go to zero and then I’m doing drugs.

I wanted it so bad for the wrong reasons. I was watching myself like… I feel like, “Hey, I’m a loser. I have no skills. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m not an engineer. I’m not a designer. I’m not a salesperson. I’m kind of the CEO of this random company that failed in roaming that I don’t give a shit about.” So it was a very difficult time period where I felt depressed and alone and, yeah, broke. So trapped. I felt like I had no freedom and just no skills. And I would have nightmares about, “I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I don’t have any skills.”

And then also, the friend group that I graduated with was quite successful. So it was like… I think it’s always relative. You could also look at this and say, “Oh, you know, I got to move in with my parents. I wasn’t homeless.” Like, I had a place to live and access. So a lot of this is self-imposed. But I would look at my friends and be like, “Wow, the path I’ve taken is completely wrong. I have no skills.”

Lessons From Rock Bottom

Megan Bruneau: Especially when you’ve grown up with the message that in order to be loved and worthy, you need to make money. So to be broke at that point and to be at the second time you’ve gone through a perceived failure and to just be thinking, “There’s no roadmap for me basically to get money and therefore I’m a loser,” like you said, I think that makes so much sense. One of my favorite quotes is a Pema Chödrön quote: “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” And I am of the belief that everything is happening for us, not necessarily to us. And some people might say that’s spiritual bypassing, which I think it can be at times, but it does seem like you were kind of being met with a similar pattern over and over again. And perhaps it was an opportunity for you to address that programming that said, “In order to be loved, you have to be rich.” Do you interpret there being any messages through those repeated experiences of what you were supposed to learn or be taught?

Robbie Bent: I mean, I think that whole experience sort of led me, right? If that hadn’t happened… I think I really tried to change through pretty extreme measures. And I had never really done any personal work before that or felt a need for it. And if you’d asked me back then, despite two days a week being in sheer terror from cocaine binges and these issues, I think I would have been like, “Yeah, I’m happy. Fine.” And be very insecure and ashamed and all those things. And so I think that sort of led me on a pretty extreme path.

From Rock Bottom to Rebuilding in a New Country

Robbie Bent: I ended up moving to Israel. I’m not Jewish and don’t speak Hebrew but had the chance to go there. One of the investors in the company was like, “Oh, I think maybe we could try and buy another hardware company with the skills that you have.” And I said, “Okay.” So I moved out there by myself, and it was a pretty hardcore thing to do. I’d been reading Tim Ferriss and that got me started on personal development work.

Megan Bruneau: And you’re still in a place of kind of shame and fear at this point? Where was your mental health?

Robbie Bent: It was still like, “Hey, I’d love to figure out something to make a salary and have some money, be able to afford things.” And also I was lonely. As in a place completely alone in this shitty little apartment. It was right on the border of Gaza now, and there’d be missiles firing. And I remember renting a car… I had to figure out everything myself and everything’s in Hebrew, so it’s hard to even read. And I ended up moving to Tel Aviv, which is much easier. But it was like a real challenge. And at that point in my life, I was like, “Okay, well, if I can just work, potentially, if I can do really hard things, then maybe my life will change.”

That was a lesson. Before that, I think I was always afraid. So like, afraid to call a person—what are they going to think of me? Afraid to ask a girl out. Afraid to go into the intense thing and just… “Oh, I want to fit in with the crowd.” And then I just sort of changed my mentality to, “I’m going to try and do the craziest things.” You know, I got my skydiving license at the time. I got a motorcycle license and started doing that. So I just started pushing myself to do things that were different and scary. Yeah, I was like, “Okay, well, if I can face my fears, that’s the barometer for ‘Should I do this or not?'”

Vipassana, Psychedelics, and Confronting Alcohol

Robbie Bent: And so Israel kind of fell into that. I didn’t have the money to go home over Christmas, and I just thought, “Oh, well, I can do this Vipassanā retreat. It’s free, it’s by donation, and maybe it will be something.” And I’d meditated a little bit before that, but that was the real thing that… “Oh, all these thoughts that are running, they’re the same every day.” You know? And it’s the same patterns from when I was a child. So that was a really interesting, my first experience with self-inquiry and understanding these feelings.

Megan Bruneau: I think that also, a couple things on what you shared. First of all, I want to acknowledge the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, I believe is what it’s called, that’s common with ADHD, where it just feels terrifying, the thought of being open to rejection. And I love that you approached that with an exposure therapy mentality: “I’m just going to expose myself to this over and over again until it seems less scary.” And we can also, through that process, shift to more of a growth mindset where it’s like, “Okay, every rejection I experience is a sign that I’m stepping out of my comfort zone. It’s a sign that I’m doing something that is uncertain or I’m being vulnerable,” and that will kind of build that muscle. So I just want to note that for people who might be able to relate.

And then for the Vipassanā piece, so many of us, the thought trains that are running in our head, we just believe are truth. And we just believe like, “Oh, well, that’s just what is.” We don’t recognize that there is a thought pattern that maybe is rooted in trauma or just being a human in this capitalistic, shaming world that tells us we’re not good enough unless we buy X or do Z—or Zed for the Canadians in the room. But I think it sounds like you were able to actually kind of create that space and recognize, “Oh, I’ve got a program running right now. Maybe I’m having some role in recreating it, and there’s an opportunity here to change some of that.”

Robbie Bent: I don’t even give myself that much credit. I don’t think I even noticed that at the time. I think it was just like, “Hey, I’m going to try and do these things and see if something happens.” And I wasn’t working with a therapist or a coach. So the reasoning, and like, that I had a PhD in that—none of that stuff was there. It was just like, “Things are not working. This is rock bottom. I’m going to try and do something new that maybe might make me feel better, that’s unconventional.”

Megan Bruneau: Right. But through that process, it sounds like you became more aware of the program.

Robbie Bent: Exactly. And then through that, I learned about psychedelic medicines. I tried ayahuasca in Israel. This was somewhat impactful the first time, but not that impactful. And then I started doing a whole bunch of research. I went to Peru and did a full four-ceremony thing, which I’ll do every few years. And that’s when things really changed. So I realized through that use that I shouldn’t be drinking alcohol. When I drink alcohol, just really bad things would happen. It wasn’t that I was a drug addict, it was that I would drink alcohol and then use a ton of drugs. And so there wasn’t a desire when I was sober. And so that was the thing for me that I hadn’t noticed that, hey, I just shouldn’t drink.

Robbie Bent: It’s so normal to be drinking and to have one or two drinks, but I would disappear. I’d have two drinks on a Tuesday night and it would be Thursday morning I’d wake up, you know, who knows where.

Megan Bruneau: We all have that friend, or maybe have been that person, or are that person for people listening. And it’s so normalized in our culture. So it’s like, okay, when we think of the addict, or the person who has a substance use problem, they’re the person who is homeless and on Skid Row or whatever. And that’s not the case for the majority of individuals struggling with some form of substance use process or addiction. And so in your case, it sounds like it took a lot of humility and kind of self-confronting, I suppose, to be like, “Hey, I do have a problem here. I need to actually take a step back and maybe stop drinking alcohol because it’s putting me in these situations that are not serving me.”

From Failure to a New Beginning in San Francisco

Robbie Bent: Yeah, it was tough. I moved back to Toronto and luckily, I had met my wife right then. We were friends before, and we’d been chatting just on Instagram. She picked me up from the airport, and then I was like, “Hey, I’m going to meet my grandma and my mom for lunch, do you want to come?” And that was our first date.

Megan Bruneau: Aw!

Robbie Bent: Which was awesome. And then I ended up moving into her apartment. I had nothing, like borrowing my dad’s car, and all my stuff was in these plastic bags in the trunk. I had no job, and I was like, “I have nowhere to live. But, can I move into your apartment?” And she had a roommate. I was hiding that I was living there for a number of weeks. And then pretty shortly after that, I got an opportunity to go to San Francisco to work on the Ethereum project pretty early on. And so I was just like, “Oh, this sounds great.” And that was another shift. Before, I’d always focused on fast-win money.

So, in finance, I can make money now. In this tech startup, I’m gonna become a millionaire quickly. And then I shifted that after the ayahuasca and I stopped drinking to, “Okay, I’m just going to put myself around smart people.” The smartest people I knew that I had access to were building Ethereum. And all of a sudden I was living in San Francisco and meeting some of my heroes in tech. And people were very ambitious. At that point, I was just okay. Instead of doing the hard thing all the time, I’m just going to work for the next ten years. I remember being 32 and I was like, by the time I’m 40, I want to have changed my life, and I’m just going to go as hard as I can at this.

I’m going to be sober and be single-track-focused and crush it. And so my wife ended up moving out with me. She quit her job—she was a dietician in a hospital—moved out with one suitcase, and then we lived in all these developer hubs for the next three to four years: San Francisco, Berlin, Thailand, and Mexico, all over, for one, two, three, four months at a time.

And that really shifted things. I started to see some financial success, but more, I saw, “Hey, I can actually manage people, I can solve problems.” All these things I learned in my startup, which I thought I had no skills from—like, okay, I know how to raise money, I know how to hire people, I know how to build products, I know how to talk to customers. And I was like, “Wow, this is actually really valuable,” seeing it and interacting with other people. So that was a huge transformation for me. It was living in San Francisco and making friends that were really driven and smart, being sober—it just really changed everything.

Connecting the Dots: Learning from Failure

Megan Bruneau: It sounds like you were seeing the skills that you were able to transfer from your experience and how it actually wasn’t a waste of your time or perhaps wasn’t a loss. So many of us get stuck in these ruminative patterns, like, “Oh, I can’t believe I wasted this many years,” or “This was such a failure,” or “Why did this happen to me?” And being able to make sense of our experiences and recognize, “Yeah, maybe that wasn’t the desired outcome at the time, but actually tracking back now, I can bring all these skills forward, and it’s brought me to where I am today.” So it’s like you were starting to right that ship, in a way, and recognize the why behind where you were at that point.

Robbie Bent: It feels pretty impossible to just feel forever like you’re just going to fail yourself to success. The more you fail—if you’re not failing, then you’re not trying hard enough. You’re not using enough of your… you’re not taking enough risk, I think, especially as you’re younger. And so I just think every step… You know, how we build Othership now from our learnings… It was like, “Okay, it’s an ice bath in a backyard. Are people coming? Okay. It’s a garage. Are people coming? What do they like? Okay, it’s a $2 million space. Are people coming? Okay, it’s a $4 million space. Okay, it’s an $8 million space.” And every time, we’re talking to customers. And it’s not like what we could have done was went out and built a 30,000-square-foot bathhouse that nobody came to.

That would have been the equivalent. And so we’re just very tight, and these are all learnings that come… now at 41, I’ve been doing this for 17 years. I’ve probably met 20,000 people, and I’ve had so many discussions and hired hundreds of people. And there’s just pattern recognition that you have over time from working and being in the arena.

But when you’re young, you don’t have it. And so the only way to get it is just to fail. Also to succeed, because you learn from that as well, sometimes more than failure because you know what works. But you kind of need both. And then I like the Steve Jobs quote where it’s like the dots only connect looking backwards. And so you just don’t know what’s going to happen. So it’s kind of like now I’m trying to really just enjoy the journey and just be like, “Okay, this is what it is.” You can be scared, but also, it’s amazing. And I’m just trying to enjoy it more because I’m still in that same scared little boy energy from the bankruptcies. I feel more confident in myself. So before I was scared and thought I was a loser. And now I feel very confident in my skill set, which was the big change in San Francisco. And now at Othership, I’m doing the thing I love with my family. I wouldn’t do anything else.

I don’t even want to sell this business because I want to keep doing it. But there’s still the scarcity part that leads to less enjoyment because there’s fear. So I just think if I’m 20 years old looking back, I’d be like, “Wow, that was the best time of my life. Fucking enjoy it.” But that’s… maybe you can coach me on that.

Navigating Fear and Scarcity as a Founder

Megan Bruneau: I’m sure! No, I mean, I think there’s room for both. It’s so natural. Who in your shoes wouldn’t feel both excitement and fear? And actually, physiologically, they are a very similar emotion. One just has more negative consequences or stories associated with it, maybe self-judgment and catastrophizing. And the other is, “Wow, opportunity. What’s going to happen?” Excitement versus fear.

I imagine if you tap into your body, you can recognize that, sure, of course, a certain percentage of that is fear and some of it is excitement, and make room for all of it. Go to some Othership classes and see what you can expand into, because that’s really what we’re here for: to just learn how to increase our emotional capacity for being human. And the other thing that I already mentioned was, from a parts perspective, there’s a reason why people who are maybe born into wealth and security and never have that kind of fear or any scarcity in their lives, there can often be a lack of motivation associated with that. I mean, talk about drug use. Of course, there’s always the classic celebrity child who ends up just striving for meaning, this sort of existential crisis, and finds themselves using drugs because they don’t necessarily have that fear that drives so many of us to do something meaningful.

I guess one of my offerings for you would be to practice some self-compassion toward that part of yourself that experiences fear, because on the one hand, it may be motivating, and also it’s just so natural. I can’t imagine a single person that would be in your shoes, maybe even Tony Robbins. I mean, I think he’s in a different place where he’s like, “Whatever. I’ve made it. It’s fine. I’ve got this well-oiled machine,” and his overhead is probably much lower than yours is. But for you, constantly navigating, “Wow, I’m dealing with all of this investor money and these overhead costs.” I mean, I know you guys are operationally profitable, but I imagine you’ve got the $8 million build-out and debt and the interest on the debt and the lease that I can only imagine how expensive that is in Flatiron and stuff like that.

Megan Bruneau: So I think, yeah, I guess it’s not necessarily a solution that’s going to get rid of the fear, but just don’t judge yourself for the fear, because that’s when we come up with those secondary emotions that create shame around having the primary emotion that actually may have some wisdom in it.

Robbie Bent: That’s great. I mean, amazing learning. So I’m happy I joined today. Now it’s worth it for you, too.

The Loneliness of an Entrepreneur

Megan Bruneau: Exactly! You’re so open, Robbie, and I appreciate it so much, and so do our listeners. So fear, I think it sounds like, is such a prevalent and natural emotion that ebbs and flows depending on what state you’re in and how you’re feeling. You also mentioned loneliness, which is such a common experience for entrepreneurs because you’re constantly working.

So there’s not a lot of time for connection or for being able to connect with yourself or really give yourself permission for those experiences. There’s a lot of what we call impression management, where it may be different in your experience, because your brand, I think, is very authentic and you’re open about your experiences. But for a lot of people, they’ve got to be telling investors, “Everything’s great, everything’s perfect, I’m perfect, I’m great.” Smile, smile, smile. Whereas that’s not the case for most entrepreneurs; it is a lonely experience. And so would you be willing to share a little bit more about your relationship to loneliness and your journey with what loneliness has looked like for you?

Robbie Bent: Yeah, I just found I want to be good at everything. And so that’s work, and it’s just so important to me for different reasons. Scarcity is one, but also just wanting to build something amazing and make a difference and have meaning, and there’s some ego attached to that. But working is very important to me; it always has been. I don’t know if that will change. It’s problematic in some ways. So that’s one. Then, I want to be a really good husband. My relationship is most important. Without my wife, I credit most of the business to her. I mean, I wouldn’t be sober without her.

And even the idea to do this, our first date, was her idea. And we work together, so that relationship is more important to me than almost anything in the world. And then, I want to be a good dad. Then I want to be healthy. Last year I was so unhealthy. I was smoking a vape all day long just to deal with the stress and was busy all the time, like 12-hour days and no exercise.

This year I’ve reversed that and have been pretty healthy. This year has been great as our team’s gotten a little bit bigger. It’s more strategic and less like me actually doing all the work. And then I want friends, and that is fucking impossible. Like those five things… to be good at all five is impossible. So, first went friends. And I was just like, “Okay, well, I don’t have time for any people.” Then it was like health was the next. And then I was like, “Well, my son.” And then I feel guilty when I’m working on a Sunday. But I think I should hang out with him. He’s only going to be this old once. So it’s a mixture of, “Hey, I don’t know how to deal with that.” And luckily he’s old enough now… before this last couple of months, he didn’t really know because he’s so young. But now it’s getting to a point where like, okay, what kind of dad do I want to be?

And then my relationship with my wife… we used to be best friends. Before having a son, it doesn’t really matter if you work 8 hours or 10 hours; there’s still six hours to spend with each other. And so every night, we’d watch hours of TV or go for a walk. So we had so much time together. She was my best friend, and I didn’t need any other friends for that period. And then once you become a dad or in a family, it’s harder because all that time is spent with your child. And that’s fun, but it’s also not really… for me, at least…

Megan Bruneau: Personal.

Robbie Bent: Yeah, it’s a caretaking role. So the idea of fun in the relationship… like we haven’t watched a TV show this whole year. He goes to bed at like 9:30 and then we just fall asleep. And so it’s like my whole day is working, and there are moments of extreme joy, like watching him run around is just unbelievable. But if I think of what it takes to connect, both my wife and I work super fucking hard. We’re both co-founders and we’re tired. And so I’ve just watched over the last two and a half years… I don’t have any friends. And I run this business where I know so many people, thousands.

I can message people and go out, but I’m just tired at 9 p.m. when my son goes to bed. We don’t have a lot of people who live near us with kids our age. But I love my co-founders so much, so they’re like my best friends, but they’re kind of living in different places. And as we’ve scaled, we live on different ends of the same city. So it’s just been hard to make time. And I don’t take the effort to say, “Hey, let’s go hang out this Friday and do a double date and find a babysitter.” It’s like one step too much.

Megan Bruneau: It’s a project.

Robbie Bent: Exactly. And if I do plan that… I’m like, “Oh, what about my task list? Oh, I can’t.” And I have friends that I love, and I could go play pickleball. Fuck, I would love to do that, and I should do that, but then I don’t. And so it’s just created, over the last two years, loneliness, where my trainer, who I barely know—I’ve met him like nine times—I’m boxing with him in the morning, and it’s my favorite part of my day. And I’m sharing that I’m lonely with this guy who barely knows me. So I just think that’s the sacrifice. If you want to build something and you want to grow fast, you want it to be successful, it’s like you kind of have to sacrifice up to a point. I’m like an eight-and-a-half-out-of-ten husband, a seven-and-a-half-out-of-ten dad, I think I’m doing a good job as a CEO, and I’m like a zero-out-of-ten friend. It’s tough.

The Entrepreneur’s Juggle: Finding Balance

Megan Bruneau: There’s only so much room in the pie graph of your energy. Sure, if you want to lower your expectations of yourself in terms of being a husband or a father or a CEO, then maybe there’s more room for other things, but it sounds like you have a lot of integrity with each of those roles. And so right now, it seems like you’re intentionally sacrificing, I suppose, these other areas of your needs. I would imagine you’re hoping that this is going to be a bit of a sprint, and at some point, you are going to be able to tend to those other parts of your life.

Robbie Bent: Exactly. And I think now is the time when I should be starting to think more like that. We’re quite profitable, things are going really well. And so it’s like, okay, I also want to do this for 20 years. And so it’s just like, what are the systems, and what should I be doing? And it’s mostly evangelizing the brand and hiring the right people. And there are things that I love doing—setting up partnerships, being at the parties—and I’m just like, “Okay, that’s not required of me anymore.” And so it’s been an interesting growth from founder, where you do everything and everything’s important, to, “Okay, not everything’s important now. What are the main things that move the needle?” and focus.

I’m trying to… and I have a coach who is really great, from brick-and-mortar, who’s been helping me. But I’m trying to… I’ve used many, and I’m a huge believer in coaches and therapists and this kind of stuff. And yeah, that’ll be my journey over the next couple of years: can I transition into a real CEO versus just a founder, and then hopefully be successful in those other roles? And I think the sprint, even if it was another three or four more years… I’m still only 41 and I’m down. And, on the flip side, there’s stress and loneliness, but also, the best ten moments in my life have come on this journey, for sure. And so there are so many… I also have these moments.

The Gratitude and The Grind

Robbie Bent: I’m just so grateful. Like just yesterday, I was looking around like, “Fuck, I love my family so much.” I live in this house I never thought I would live in, I’m living my dream, and I have people messaging me every day saying this changed their life.

Two people messaged me saying, “My husband and I both got cancer and we used Othership every day to deal with our cancer. You can’t believe how this changed our lives.” And so, you know, I hear something like that. And my mom was out getting her hair done and the stylist was talking about her experience at Othership. And then my mom was like, “Oh my God, my son owns that. Here’s five passes I want to give to you.” And my mom is all proud because she’s like, “Aren’t you proud of what you built?” And so, to have my mom… like that was an insecurity, you know? So I love that my mom is proud of me now. So pretty much everything I ever wanted in life… ten years ago, if you would have told me when I was at rock bottom… it all came true. Everything. I have my best friends in the world doing this.

I have the wife of my dreams, an amazing kid. My son brightens up my day. My relationship with my parents has improved significantly over the past ten years. So just everything I wanted when I was an addict has happened. And so I think, being grateful, it’s so crazy—it’s all there. And it’s like, I need to spend more time enjoying it. And so that’s my work.

The Practice of Self-Compassion in Emotional Health

Megan Bruneau: Well, I think humans need meaning and connection to not be in an existential depression. There are other things we need as well, but those are two main ones. And so it sounds like you have the meaning piece dialed. You are getting meaningful recognition every single day. You’re feeling relevant every day in that sense. And the piece that sounds like it’s missing is the connection piece. And so once again, I think that there’s space for both. You have this meaning piece, let’s be grateful around it. But the other thing is that, again, if you’re a fan of self-compassion, which I imagine you are…

Robbie Bent: That one’s harder for me, though. Being kind to myself is tough. So what do you recommend?

Megan Bruneau: Well, I see that even when you say, “I should be more grateful.” When we say, “I should be more grateful,” you’re really shaming yourself for not being grateful enough. And this is pervasive, by the way. This is one of my challenges with something like the gratitude movement, which I deeply believe in, but I’ve always been a little skeptical of because it can be very emotionally invalidating of our experiences. It’s sort of like, “Oh, well, Robbie, what do you have to feel lonely or sad about? You should be so grateful for this and this and that.” And what that offers is a moment of self-abandonment.

There you are, abandoning yourself and saying, “Yeah, I don’t know, I shouldn’t feel lonely or frustrated or sad. I’m being weak or I’m being ungrateful,” or whatever it is. And that’s where that critical inner voice comes in and is judging us. So there’s room to be able to recognize… I always say there’s room for both grief and gratitude, or pain and perspective. We can have both of those things beside each other. And actually, one without the other does just come off as being really invalidating. So a kind of sentence starter for people for self-compassion is: “It’s understandable I’m feeling whatever I’m feeling because…” So I would just say to yourself, “Robbie, dude, buddy, sweet little boy,” whatever you want to call yourself, give yourself a little love.

“It’s understandable that you’re feeling frustrated or depleted or tired or lonely or sad or isolated,” or any of those experiences. Just feeling into that… and I can see that you’re noticing that in your body there. So to feel that… it’s understandable because you’ve been working your ass off for years and you have poured your soul and heart into this business and serving these thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people doing this meaningful work. And as a result, there’s been a trade-off because you also want to be a great dad and partner. And so you’ve left yourself behind a lot of this time. You’ve abandoned yourself. And so it makes sense that you feel all those things. Anyone in your shoes would feel the same way. That is the validation piece. And then, alongside that, let’s remember why we’re choosing this. Let’s remember this is a sprint. Let’s remember we have a plan here where in a couple of years, we’re going to be in that true CEO role, or maybe we’re even going to step back and just be on the board. Or we’re going to stick to fundraising or the fun stuff that feels connecting—doing the research and hearing from people their experiences, because that feels good.

And we’re going to bring in that help. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, and you are choosing to do this intentionally, and you can be grateful for everything you have. But it’s also okay to feel these uncomfortable feelings. And that’s your whole ethos: being able to feel and process those.

Robbie Bent: That just made me feel better just listening to you. Of course.

Megan Bruneau: So what was it like to give yourself a bit of compassion there and just acknowledge it’s okay to feel that way?

Robbie Bent: I’ve had times where I used a lot of coaches—health coach, business coach. I found feeling into my body for these emotions… because I’d be ashamed of them. I’d be like, “Oh, I get angry at work and that’s not okay.” It’s like, now, that’s okay. Maybe you can improve the response, but there’s a reason why you’re getting angry, and it’s not to be ashamed of. All these emotions have a place. And that’s what I learned. I would oscillate to a period now where I have no coaching and I’m just focused and trying to feel by intuition. I just haven’t spent as much time in inquiry in my own emotions. So when you said that, I was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s fine to have all these feelings and to be afraid and to be angry, and it’s just part of the human experience.”

I haven’t said to myself, “You’ve chosen this.” And I have, for a reason, and I’m happy about it. And if you ask me, “Would you do all this exactly the same?” I think I would make the exact same trade-off. So it’s kind of like… yeah, I just really enjoyed the exercise.

The Evolutionary Purpose of Difficult Emotions

Megan Bruneau: Yeah, I’m so glad to hear that. My listeners have heard this many times, but our emotions are evolutionary. We’re a pro-social being. We would not have survived or proliferated as the human race for hundreds of thousands of years if we weren’t in groups procreating and protecting ourselves from predators. And every emotion has an evolutionary message. Loneliness tells us to connect. It’s meant to be uncomfortable because it wants us to connect. Same with shame and guilt that tell us to either change something about ourselves or repair a rupture in a relationship. Anxiety tells us to prepare or watch out. All of this is meant to protect us in many ways.

Anger, I’ll just mention that last one, is meant to say, “Hey, a boundary has been crossed, or you’re being mistreated in some way, or there’s an injustice that’s occurred.” Without anger, women wouldn’t vote. There are all sorts of things that have happened as a result of anger. So we tend to pathologize our emotions and judge ourselves for them, especially when we’ve done a lot of personal work. We think, “Oh, I can’t believe I’m still having this difficult emotion. What a failure I am,” when it’s like, no. I think it’s Susan David who says something along the lines of, “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”

Robbie Bent: I like that. That’s a really… yeah, that’s like a good tagline maybe for our business.

Megan Bruneau: Totally. As long as we’re alive, we are going to… we’re lucky if we get to experience grief. And that’s something I remind myself, like, “Wow, I’m deep in grief right now,” still with my mom, who I lost just over a year ago. It was a complex relationship, and I think about it every day, and it’s still very emotional for me. And yet it’s painful and it’s going to continue to be painful, and I give myself permission to have those emotions. And also, what a gift that I had that close of a relationship and that I got to outlive her. I get to experience that grief. I mean, grief really is our journey here, as is anxiety or rejection or disappointment or frustration, all of that.

So a lot of the work I do and encourage for clients is to just learn how to expand into those emotions. And I think that’s why I love Othership so much, because even though it might be easy to forget at times, really what you are doing is offering a space where a person can build those emotional tolerance muscles and be like, “Oh, okay, I can actually allow room for this to come up and feel into it and let it move through me,” and it doesn’t mean it’s not going to come up again. All of this stuff is pretty chronic or pervasive, especially if you’re dealing with this every single day, feeling like a failure in different areas where you’re not meeting your own expectations or the expectations of others. But I think being able to notice those as opportunities to practice some self-compassion and be kinder to yourself while still acting within your integrity.

Embracing Imperfection on the Path to Growth

Megan Bruneau: There’s a fine line between integrity and perfectionism. And so, just recognizing, “When am I stepping into perfectionism, where I’m having unrealistic expectations for myself and being hard on myself? And when is this really just my integrity? I just want to show up as a good father and husband and CEO and all of that.” And you have the wisdom, it sounds like, or the self-awareness to probably make that distinction.

Robbie Bent: Yeah, it’s crazy, but I really didn’t know for probably ten years. A lot of different modalities and work and exploration, and sometimes I’ll be in a conversation and think, “Is this stuff working?” And I’ll have these doubts. And just for people out there who are doing this stuff, you’re moving the Titanic. These are thought patterns from when I was four, five, six years old. And then I’ll think about it and I’m like, “Oh, my life has completely changed.” But still, there’s the childhood part. Do you see people in your work change completely? What happens if I continue on this path for ten more years?

Megan Bruneau: Change happens, of course. Yes. Awareness is the first step to change, but it’s not the only step. We’re also living in a culture, especially when it comes to self-help, that is very commoditized and driven by people who are great at marketing, and quick fixes sell. So it’s the same thing as what you already said: weight loss, youth, love—these are all things that people want. And happiness is a big one. And so there are a lot of coaches or people out there who will say, “Ten sessions, and you’re going to find the love of your life and be happy forever.”

Whereas the less sexy marketing is, “Hey, we’re not going for constant happiness because that’s not possible. We’re looking more for contentment, we’re looking for alignment, we’re looking for unconditional self-love where you’re still acting within your integrity.” It’s not like a narcissistic “I’m perfect.” It’s more, to quote Kristin Neff, who’s one of the founders of self-compassion along with Paul Gilbert, she says self-compassion is not about saying “I’m perfect.” It’s about saying, “I’m imperfect, just like every other human out there, and that’s okay.” So it’s learning to integrate perhaps our exiled parts, if you want to use IFS language—our parts that maybe we’ve disavowed or we have a lot of shame around. So many of us, especially in the self-help or wellness industries, are trying to get to a place where we believe everything is healed.

My perspective is healing is less about, “Oh, all of these parts of me are perfect and great,” and more like, “Hey, I can look at these parts of myself that I don’t totally love all the time, or the parts of myself that I’m still working on shifting and changing, and I can meet them with love and maybe a curiosity that, through that process, allows me to change them.” Because shame, when we judge ourselves, makes us avoid whatever it is that we’re looking at. So if you get in a fight with your wife, and you’re like, “I want to be a good husband,” and then you get in a fight and you’re angry and maybe you say something that you regret, and then you’re feeling all this shame, you’re not going to be like, “What was I feeling in that moment? What caused me to react in that defensive way?” You’re going to have more of a narcissistic response and be like, “Oh, she provoked me. She should be gentler with me with all that I’m going through.” We’re able to have more integrity, humility, and self-accountability when we meet ourselves with self-compassion.

That’s where true change comes from. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but I guess the answer is yes, change absolutely happens. It also is glacial. It’s something where we want to still be able to meet ourselves where we’re at in the process and recognize “I am enough as I am, and there’s still room for growth.” You’ll notice with me, there’s a lot of “side-by-side.” “This is true, and this is also true.” And so it’s like, “Hey, I can love myself unconditionally in this moment, and I can still value growth and wanting to be better.” Wanting to learn more, wanting to meet life as though it’s my teacher, or discomfort as my teacher. Relationships are incredibly spiritual. Parenthood is even more spiritual. And so those are all opportunities for awakening. And I think if you have that approach, there’s a lot more room for experiencing imperfection without judging yourself so much.

Robbie Bent: Yeah, it feels like a training ground now. It’s like new parent, business scaling, entrepreneurship… there are just many, many moments of conflict every day, and the opportunity to do it with so many people, and then a relationship… yeah, it’s a lot. So it feels like there’s actually a chance to practice all this stuff. Six years ago, I wouldn’t even notice because I just didn’t have these responsibilities. So that’s a good reframe that I like.

Megan Bruneau: I mentioned relationships and parenthood are spiritual, but entrepreneurship is also an incredibly spiritual opportunity because it does push us out of our comfort zone and force us to experience parts of ourselves and emotions that we might not otherwise. So where we did leave off was around where things started really taking off for Othership. It started out, it sounds like, in your backyard, then it moved to the garage. Help us through the next iterations as you started to really build this into the brand that it is.

From Garage Experiments to Rapid Scaling

Robbie Bent: Yes. There were a few moments. One was in the garage when we first started doing these classes—they weren’t even called that yet. It was a Valentine’s Day event that my co-founders, who design basically all our programming, put on. I mean, they’re just incredible, and they care as much as my wife and I. It was Valentine’s Day.

It was like, “Hey, three couples go in the ice bath, do a hug to warm up, and then let’s do a self-guided massage of each other’s partners in the sauna and then share your first date story.” It was crazy. And then the next night, we did one called the “Desert Storm.” It was just three saunas, hotter and hotter, until the last one was in pitch black, and then we shared an emotional moment, and everyone screamed. It was like, “Whoa, that was crazy.” So we just kept trying things. There’s something there. I was like, “Wow, there’s something here with no phone in this high-intensity environment, and then adding therapy-like inquiry.” That was a moment of, “Okay, we should build this.”

Then, when we opened and started doing our first classes, not in the garage but in a purpose-built environment with crazy sound and lighting, it was right away. It was day one. We had built this thousand-person community in the garage, and so it was just lights-out busy. I was seeing investment bankers and doctors and lawyers and parents—normal, mainstream people that traditionally maybe haven’t done coaching or meditation or spirituality or church—and they were crying and sharing. It was just so clear in that first month that this doesn’t exist anywhere in the world.

At that point, it was also clear, “Hey, this is a very good idea.” And when people would come, they’d immediately say, “I live in LA, can you open there? I live in Calgary. Can you open? I live in Washington. Can we get the franchise?” I’ve had probably 800-plus people reach out for franchise rights. So then it was like, “Okay, we should probably go fast.” I did a bunch of research. I looked at Austin. It’s really a customer who resonates with Othership. But we landed on New York because it’s just the hardest place in North America to live. It’s the biggest market. It is the grimmest, most stressed area. A lot of my friends had had their awakening and then they’re like, “Oh, I want to build a retreat center in Costa Rica.” And I was like, “Okay, people can’t go to Costa Rica. Let’s build it in the hardest place to live in the world.” And that was always what was really inspiring to me.

The Pain of Scaling: A New York Story

Robbie Bent: So, we decided we had a two-pronged approach. We’d open a second flagship in Toronto and then also in New York. We were going to raise a bunch of money and do it all at once, based on what the first one was doing, and it was only a couple of months old. So, we raised some money and we signed three leases at once and then just felt pretty much two years of absolute pain scaling a business. The first one, you know, we had built restaurants before, and the construction was pretty easy, and it all worked pretty seamlessly. We had started small and grew prudently. And there honestly weren’t that many problems. There were definitely people saying, “This will never work,” but it was very successful right away and the brand really hit. Everything went really well, and comparatively to some of the other companies I’ve had which have failed, it just felt so right and perfect.

Then when we started scaling, it was like we doubled the size of the space and did that three times over and signed all the leases. The idea was that we really wanted to move to a new city like New York with momentum, so we’d have one opening and then another one. We were so confident in the product. And we opened, and it was even busier than we expected, even as confident as we were. There’s been even more demand because we went to New York and Miami and LA and Dallas and there was just nothing there that was significant or even similar at all. And so we just knew, if this is the customer that’s coming in Toronto, people are way more stressed in New York and they want to be social way more. So it just felt too obvious. But we underestimated how expensive it was going to be. It was two-and-a-half times the price of what we thought, just for one unit. And then we had two more leases, so five times the budget.

There was a moment last year in the summer… our whole team had moved down May 13th. It’s so expensive to live in New York, so the cheapest thing we could find was an Airbnb with six bedrooms to fit twelve of us. We were living with bunk beds, air mattresses. My sister works in there, she was there with her dog, my son was there, my mom was there taking care of our son… just crazy. And we couldn’t get open. It took an extra three months because of the permits. We didn’t really understand how long that process would take or what to do. I had to go down to the Department of Buildings like five times to beg them to help us out and go to their office hours. So that was pretty crazy. We had to just grind, and that whole time, we were at risk of running out of money. And I still had this other build coming where I’m like, I don’t know how I’m going to fund this one. So it was a disaster.

Luckily, we figured everything out. We opened, and from day one, just the word of mouth—because the product is so good—has been crazy. We did way more volume than we expected and kind of made up for the shortfall. We were able to cut our build costs significantly, and now we’re launching Williamsburg in about 45 to 60 days, max. So, we really turned things around.

Megan Bruneau: And it sounds like there was a moment there where you’re like, “Shit, is this going to work?”

Robbie Bent: Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t ever, “Is this going to work?” just because once it’s open, it works. It was more, “Hey, did we screw up this build completely? Is it even going to be profitable with how much we spent on it?” And yes, it is, but it wasn’t clear at the time. And then it was like, “What are we going to do?” You can’t raise money when you’re in a challenging moment. So it’s like, “Oh my God, how are we going to fund this?” We actually had to self-fund a huge amount of money. It was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me: my mom actually mortgaged her house because we were in a problem. And it wasn’t even enough. So we had to mortgage our house, and then my co-founder had to mortgage his house. Those three houses had to be put up that we borrowed against to put money into the business to keep it going. At that moment, it’s hard to raise money when you need it urgently.

But now it’s been really easy. We’ve raised money since then. It’s crushing it. But you have these moments of almost death. And it was because I thought, “Oh, there’s no way it’s going to cost more than $4 million because Toronto was $2 million.” And it just… everything was wrong. One of those mistakes is not a big deal, but when you have five of them, it really causes issues. So now we know, and there’s just a ton of learnings there of what things cost and how to build in New York. And so now we’re building more in New York. We’re about to sign our fifth and sixth lease, which is super exciting.

The Business of Building Community: Pricing and Payback

Megan Bruneau: Do you plan to go to secondary markets?

Robbie Bent: We will, yeah.

Megan Bruneau: Okay. And are you going to do price localization there? I would just imagine a place like New York, people are willing to spend $64. Even though I know it’s a steal for what you’re getting in comparison to maybe the competitors, it still is maybe twice the cost of a boutique fitness class in many cases. So I imagine you’ll adjust pricing based on your markets.

Robbie Bent: Yeah. So in Toronto, it’s $55. But that’s just a drop-in price, which means you’re not a community member. In New York specifically, it’s a lot of tourists coming, and so they’re subsidizing the members. The average price is $42 in New York and it’s $38 in Toronto. So it’s slightly more. How we think about it is it should be about 20% more than a boutique fitness class because you’re in pools. And two, it’s longer—it’s 75 minutes or two hours versus 60 minutes, and you have complimentary tea and a towel. So we kind of look at it as it should be at least 20-25% more than boutique fitness. And if you’re coming for a drop-in, it should be about the price of two drinks, because if you’re coming on a Friday night, you’re not going out for drinks. So I look at it in that range as high-end boutique fitness, low-end of a social night. And that seems to be perfect. So we’ll base that in any city. But the Toronto numbers are about 15% cheaper than New York, and I think that will scale to Boston and Chicago and Dallas and any tier-one market in the US.

Megan Bruneau: And then how about payback period, if you’re open to sharing any of that? I can just imagine with that kind of build-out and what I imagine the lease to be in that kind of location, what are you looking at in terms of that time horizon to be able to get back to a place where you’re profitable, considering all those other costs?

Robbie Bent: So world-class is two years. That’s sort of the benchmark for any brick-and-mortar that really wants to scale. You kind of want to be sub-two years. Some of our units will be that. Flatiron will not, just because we screwed up the build pretty significantly due to our own mistakes. Williamsburg likely will, though. So, a two-year payback is the goal. For some of your bigger units in tier-one markets like New York, it can be three years. You don’t really want to go beyond three years; it starts to then impact the valuation. But two to three years is the target.

Wisdom for Founders: Learn from Others, Master the Details

Megan Bruneau: You’ve experienced so much as an entrepreneur and as a human in terms of failed startups and even the challenges you’ve gone through with Othership. For entrepreneurs who are listening, aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking for tactical wisdom or advice, what have you learned in terms of leadership or scaling or fundraising? Is there anything where you’re like, “Oh, this feels like a really juicy lesson I want to share with people”?

Robbie Bent: Yeah. So I’ll do a meta lesson and then some tactical lessons. I used to focus more on coaches, and I found it can be good for mindset, but then I’ve moved more towards getting advice from people doing the specific thing you want to do. A big mistake is if you hire somebody from a senior company, like, “Oh, a designer at Apple.” They’re probably an amazing designer, but what did they do at Apple specifically? What did they design? So I’m now like, “Okay, I really want to know who’s done this exact thing super well.” And how I find that is through the podcast Founders by David Senra. He just reads these biographies of all the best founders—like 400 episodes. And I’ve learned more from that than my MBA by a hundred times. A lot of decisions on how I run my company are from that podcast. So the meta lesson is, if you want to learn the most you can as a founder, just go into that podcast, find ten companies that are doing similar things, and copy them. Wisdom lasts forever. These are maxims that are always applicable. Some of the companies he covers are from the 1850s and some are from today. So that was my greatest piece of learning.

I also listened to something from Brian Chesky recently that really hit home. It was just explaining “founder mode.” And so, something I really like is this: people will start pressuring you to hire senior people as you get successful. And yes, you should, but you should hire them *and* the person underneath them, and you should be involved as a CEO in every single hire up to the first 400, 500, 800, 1,000 people. That’s something that Elon Musk and Steve Jobs had in common. So I think just because you hire somebody who knows more than you in a function—which will happen because you’re growing and you don’t know about HR or finance or how these things run at scale—a mistake is to think, “Oh, I’m going to hire this expert who’s going to do that.” I think it’s extremely important for you to be in the details. Myself, I believe in what I got from Jensen Huang from Nvidia, which is an “eyes on, hands off” approach. I see everything; every single person updates to me transparently. I personally manage like 20 people—not necessarily managing their career goals, but knowing what they’re working on. And I think that can scale even to 40 people. As a CEO, you want to know what everyone who reports to you and everyone who reports to them are doing and be in the details so that you can prevent issues and just know what’s going on.

I was told initially to kind of hire a senior person and let them run, and now I’ve swung back to way more micromanaging. That can sometimes be a pejorative term, but I just don’t believe that. I believe especially when you’re young and budding and growing, be in the details as much as possible, and don’t be afraid to say, “Hey, I’m not micromanaging. I want to be involved, and I want to know what’s happening.” You’re right as a founder of a company with the product sense to really know that. So that’s a bunch of learnings that have happened for me in the last little bit.

Megan Bruneau: That’s amazing. Thank you so much, Robbie. And then how about moving on to the more spiritual, mental, psychological, whatever you want to call it, in terms of your journey both as a founder and as a human? Anything that you’ve got for people?

Breaking the Scarcity Loop: Powerlessness vs. Resourcefulness

Robbie Bent: One way I’m looking at it… the loop is: scarcity triggers anger, which triggers shame for being angry. And so now I’m trying to be more less conflict-avoidant and more direct. That’s one loop I’m working on. And I think one thing that’s helped with that is when I start to feel that scarcity before getting angry, it’s trying to remember I’m resourceful.

I’ll go back and think about all the different problems I’ve solved over the last six years and how aggressively we’ll go and solve these problems. We’re known as a company for being extremely detail-oriented on every item, and there have just been so many things we’ve made work. And so it’s like when I have a scarcity mindset, remembering, “Hey, actually, you’ve solved all these problems before, so why are they going to be problems in the future?” That’s a good one if you’re afraid. It’s just kind of giving evidence of where you’ve solved problems, because then it’s like, “Okay, well, what am I afraid of? I can just solve the problems as they come up.” So that’s been a learning that I’ve been experimenting with that’s been somewhat helpful.

Megan Bruneau: Oh yeah. I’ll just jump in there, Robbie. Thank you for sharing that. I think what I hear there as I listen is, “I feel a sense of scarcity and that leaves me feeling powerless.” I think there is an emotion there before the anger that’s coming up for you. Especially for men, there are times where anger is what we call the primary emotion—when it’s like, “Hey, there’s an injustice here,” or “I need to advocate for myself,” or “I’m being mistreated.” But so often, especially for men but really for all of us, anger is what we call a secondary emotion, a more comfortable emotion to experience than the one that’s really at the core. So it sounds like for you, underneath that anger is that sense of powerlessness.

And then you try to feel powerful or empowered by being angry and acting on that anger. The more productive response for you there is actually empowering yourself through recognizing how resourced you are. Like, “Hey, I actually can count on myself to be resilient here and resourceful, and I don’t need to move toward anger or trying to feel powerful and control everything or everyone. I need to sit in and remind myself of the fact that I’m not powerless, and I can count on myself in this moment of feeling scared.” Is that accurate?

Robbie Bent: That sounds exactly right. And then sometimes, it’s not just empowering myself, but even remembering… I feel powerlessness and also helplessness. Like, I’m going to be the one that has to figure it out and be all alone. Everyone’s going to leave me. It’s all going to end up on me only to solve these problems. And so, that one is good, and the other one is just reminding myself, “Hey, my team can figure this out.”

Megan Bruneau: Yes, so good.

Robbie Bent: I’ve got a whole bunch of homework from you. I’m excited.

Final Wisdom: “Be the Most Me”

Megan Bruneau: Good, good. Well, before we wrap, Robbie, anything else that you want to share? Any final thoughts, advice, musings? We’ve got lots of rich stuff, so no pressure, but just in case there’s anything else, I want to leave you the mic for the last few moments.

Robbie Bent: Yeah, I heard one of “Be the Most Me.” So if you’re out there, what’s really helped me since I was 30 was just any quirks or insecurities, just leaning into them. And so Othership is an exploration of our identities without anything held back. That includes being vulnerable on podcasts and sharing things. And so I just like this idea… everybody tries to conform in high school. I tried to conform in elementary school and high school to the group to not be an outcast. And then as I’ve gotten older, it’s about, “Who am I, actually?” And I just like that slogan a lot. I heard it on another podcast, I can’t remember where, but “Be the Most Me” is a really nice one to end on.

Megan Bruneau: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And I think, again, it comes back to that evolutionary desire to belong. Hey, we all conform because we want to belong and we want to feel safe. And reaching a point where you recognize, “Hey, I can be different from that person or that person, and I can have my unique strengths and weaknesses and still be lovable,” and let me just embrace that and be the most me. So that’s beautiful.

What’s Next for Othership and How to Connect

Megan Bruneau: Well, where can people find you? And what’s next for you?

Robbie Bent: Yeah, if you’re in Toronto or New York, hit me up on Instagram, @robbiebent, or LinkedIn, just Robbie Bent, and ask for a pass and come and check it out. That’s the best thing that you could do if you like what I said. It’s to literally come to the space and check it out.

Megan Bruneau: Awesome, great. And what’s next for you in terms of what you’re looking forward to or what you’re feeling excited about in this moment?

Robbie Bent: Yeah, I’m moving to New York in less than a month for the next couple of months, and we’re launching our Brooklyn location, so it’s almost done. It’s a couple of weeks away. And so that will be huge, demonstrating we can open a second location in New York. And then we’re about to sign our fifth lease for a new concept, and it’ll be the biggest Othership to date with some new classes and new features, which I’ll be announcing soon. So those two things I’m really, really stoked about.

Megan Bruneau: Incredible. Well, for anyone listening, definitely go check out Othership at othership.us Check it out. Definitely go have the experience. It is so worth it, so powerful. And Robbie, thank you for your vulnerability, your wisdom, for showing up today in your full self, all your parts. I can’t say how much I appreciate this conversation.

Robbie Bent: Awesome. Thanks.

Megan Bruneau: You’re welcome.

Megan Bruneau, M.A. Psych is a therapist, executive coach, and the founder of Off The Field Executive & Personal Coaching. She hosts The Failure Factor podcast featuring conversations with entrepreneurs about the setbacks that led to their success.