today on read receipt, i'm talking with nico varano, ceo of sweathouz, one of the fastest-growing recovery franchises in the country. nico's journey to ceo wasn't a straight line. after a career in finance and private equity, he discovered sweathouz while training for a charity boxing match, became the brand's first franchisee, and eventually stepped into the ceo role. today, sweathouz operates more than 100 locations across 25 states, helping thousands of members incorporate sauna, cold plunge, and recovery into their weekly routines. we discuss building a business around habits instead of trends, scaling through franchising, creating memorable customer experiences, and why the future of wellness may be less about doing more and more about making space for stillness. if you're interested in entrepreneurship, franchising, wellness, or building a category-defining brand, this conversation is for you.
We're creating space for the brains behind the brands we love, and asking good questions along the way. The result is a deep dive into the how and why of brand-building, from blueprints to launch day, customers as community and the detours in between. big lessons, easy listening.
In this episode of Read Receipt, Sean sits down with Nico Varano, CEO of SweatHouz, the contrast therapy franchise redefining recovery through private sauna, cold plunge, and vitamin C shower experiences.
Nico's path to CEO wasn't conventional. After starting his career in finance and private equity, he discovered SweatHouz while training for a charity boxing match and became the brand's first franchisee. After rapidly scaling his own studios, he was tapped to lead the company as CEO.
Today, SweatHouz operates more than 100 locations across 25 states and has become one of the fastest-growing wellness franchises in the country. Nico shares lessons on franchising, customer retention, operational excellence, hospitality, and why the future of recovery isn't about flashy experiences, it's about building habits people return to week after week.
Tune in for an inside look at scaling a category-defining wellness brand while balancing leadership, fatherhood, and the pursuit of sustainable growth!
Chapters:
00:00 — Meet Nico Varano
Nico shares his background in finance, private equity, and his family's restaurant business.
02:00 — Discovering SweatHouz
How training for a charity boxing match led Nico to contrast therapy and ultimately franchise ownership.
03:36 — Becoming the First Franchisee
Acquiring and growing the Assembly Row location in Boston.
04:28 — The SweatHouz Business Model
Memberships, private suites, margins, and creating a scalable wellness business.
09:55 — Building a Habit, Not an Event
The philosophy behind customer retention and long-term wellness behavior.
14:22 — Franchising at Scale
How SweatHouz supports franchisees while maintaining brand consistency.
26:55 — What's Next for SweatHouz
Loyalty programs, wearable integrations, and the company's future growth plans.
32:55 — Entrepreneurship, Fatherhood, & Leadership
Nico reflects on balancing business growth with family life.
35:20 — Final Thoughts
The future of recovery, hospitality, and building lasting businesses.
Takeaways:
Nico Varano: If you conquer those two things, you have successful franchisees and you have a really amazing brand, you win
Sean Donovan: I am super excited to have you back for another episode of Read Receipt. It's a deep dive into the how and why of the brands we love and the creatives behind them. From blueprints to launch day, customers as community, and the detours in between. Big lessons and easy listening. Read Receipt is hosted by Antidote, the email and SMS marketing agency by people who hate boring email.
Intro VO: Read Receipt. I
Nico Varano: got the call that there was an opportunity to step in as the CEO of SweatHouz, so jumped right on a plane, came down on about three days notice, and was ready to rock and roll. Just because I, you know, I live, eat, sleep, the brand SweatHouz and really believe in what we're building.
Sean Donovan: What was your background before being involved in SweatHouz?
Nico Varano: Before getting into the world of, uh, saunas, cold plunges, and vitamin C showers, I came up in finance. Uh, so did little bit of the traditional investment banking to private equity route that a lot of people do when they study finance and accounting in school. And at some point, got a little burnt out and had the opportunity to hear about SweatHouz from the founder, Jamie Weeks, even before they started franchising. Heard about the concept, saw what he was building, and at the time I was training for a charity boxing match, so figured, well, I'm getting my head kicked in left and right, uh, raising money for cancer research, but also preparing for a big boxing match in Boston. So went to try out SweatHouz and absolutely loved the experience. Loved the business model, loved the experience, and that night called, uh, Jamie Weeks and said, "I'd love to be a first franchisee."
Sean Donovan: That's awesome. What was your experience at SweatHouz for your first time? Was that, was that the first time you had done sauna and cold plunge back and forth?
Nico Varano: Yeah, it was my... It was honestly my first cold plunge ever, other than jumping in, like, icy water in the winter in Boston. Back then, that was SweatHouz V1, so you know, we had nine sauna suites and one cold plunge. So I did my hour in the sauna suite, did 45 minutes in the sauna. Thought I was sweating everything out that I had ever eaten, drank any- I mean, at the time I was training for a charity boxing match, thought I was pretty tough. But that cold plunge, boy, it, uh, it hits you. It makes you, uh, you know, it makes you feel a bunch of different things. And I was like, wow, this water's beating my butt pretty good. But once I got out and felt the benefits of the cold plunge, of the sauna, of the whole experience, I mean, I slept the best I had ever slept, and I'm not a great sleeper.
Sean Donovan: Are you an avid cold plunge person now?
Nico Varano: Yeah. Now, if I don't cold plunge at least twice a week, and, like, twice a week sometimes isn't even enough, I, I feel like I can't think straight, right? And, you know, with business, every day you gotta make big decisions or you gotta think about decisions three, four lanes from now and what this decision might impact. And if I haven't cold plunged, I feel like I always make the wrong decisions. Definitely allows me to sort of operate.
Sean Donovan: So after you talked to the founder about- Franchising, what did that look like? Did you have any experience with franchising physical location business before?
Nico Varano: Nope. I could, uh, I could build, you know, a financial model in Excel pretty well, but I couldn't run a business or a fitness studio or wellness concept at all. But I believed in the brand. I believed that, you know, coming up in a family restaurant business, if you can sell a meatball or a chicken cutlet and make people feel special, why can't you do the same things with saunas, cold plunges, and, you know, make people feel special so that they wanna sign up for a membership and come back? And combining those two things, an interest in saunas and cold plunges and how they made people feel with, you know, the four-wall retail model, made me believe I could do it.
Sean Donovan: What was the process like for you to open? Where did you open the first?
Nico Varano: So I actually acquired a corporate studio. So I got to talk with the executive team at SweatHouz, said, "I wanna be your first franchisee. Uh, and you guys have a studio that's in my backyard, uh, right outside of Boston, Mass, in a place called Assembly Row." The, the brand and, and Jamie Weeks said, "Hey, we'd love to give you as a first franchisee a leg up. You know, acquire this studio at a very reasonable price, and it will help your development." And then that allowed me as an operator and as a franchisee to go from one studio to five studios within 18 months.
Sean Donovan: What are the mechanics of the business model for getting customers? It seems like a recurring revenue business with memberships. Talk to me about that.
Nico Varano: I, I'll talk about revenue first, and then I'll talk about just the four-wall model and why both were attractive to me. On the revenue side, you know, before I decided to get into SweatHouz, I just watched all the walks of life that came into SweatHouz. You know, the thing about SweatHouz is we don't have a type, right? We have a core client, but if you're 60, 65, you're probably coming into SweatHouz to maybe deal with arthritis. If you're a 40-year-old mother, you're probably coming in to get that one hour a day to sort of escape the noise that your kids might create. If you're a 50-year-old business exec, you might be even taking meetings from SweatHouz or just escaping the noise of all the emails and Slack messages and all that stuff. And then obviously we have our core clientele that's 25 to 40 that does it for the variety of reasons we know about. You know, mental health, physical health, recovering from maybe doing HYROX now. The overall net of SweatHouz is what really excited me because not only are we a membership business and memberships make up about 40 to 45% of our revenue, there's also that business of a recurring pack holder, somebody that maybe just does drop-in sessions, somebody that maybe just takes advantage of when we run a special campaign or promotion. But at the end of the day, everybody in the United States, and hopefully the world, can benefit from taking one hour at SweatHouz. One hour to totally escape. You close that door of your private suite and you're by yourself unless you choose to bring a friend or a partner, and there's not many places in the world where you can do that and just totally disconnect. Yeah, you're gonna get the health benefits, you're gonna sweat out, you're gonna detox, you're gonna reduce your inflammation, but at the end of the day, you're also getting an hour of solitude. There's no better place to do it other than SweatHouz. That's what really drew me in on the revenue side. On the operating side, look, they're small boxes, right? You know, anywhere from 1,600 to 2,000 square feet. Can fit seven to eight private suites. You don't need a ton of labor, so it's a very low variable cost operating model. And that's what really drew me in, is that, you know, with the right team of 10 people, right? And you probably have two, at most times, maybe three people on the weekends, you can position this thing to be very, very successful. Not only top line, but also bottom line, which will help you then scale to build even more studios.
Sean Donovan: How many members can a location hold? It seems like also you scaled your ecosystem of year five quickly. Did you see immediate success upon opening? Did you already have that plan before acquiring?
Nico Varano: You know, I'll, I'll go back. My biggest leg up was acquiring a studio and starting with a little bit of a leg up, and then that allowed me to establish the brand. You know, you see all these communal events. We were bringing pop-up plunges everywhere during pre-sales. We opened every studio in Boston, uh, with more than 230 members at each location, which when you open month one with that many members, you're going to be profitable month one. And then that's going to allow you to quickly start to reinvest the dollars maybe in that studio, but hopefully in even more future studios. And that is what really helped me. Also, in Boston and in other seasonal markets, from the months of September through April, when it's great months for sweat house, our season is about nine months. It's those dark gray, stormy cold months. And then in other parts of the country, we actually see, like in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, we actually don't have any seasonality 'cause it's hot year-round and the studios still do really well. So I think timing was really great, but also we went over the community in Boston and really planted ourselves as the place for sauna and cold plunge between the years of 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Sean Donovan: And do you guys have a launch playbook for scaling memberships before you open doors? Was that playbook given to you or did you kind of develop that on your own because of being the first franchise?
Nico Varano: Well, we definitely figured out a lot together. I will say this, the SweatHouz playbook that existed in 2022 and 2023 really helped and assisted, and then we continued to develop that. We never thought events would be as big of a, of a playbook addition that it is now today. Last summer in Boston alone, we did over 150 events in the course of four months. We brought them to breweries, we brought them to the Seaport in Boston, we brought them to, uh, Gillette Stadium. We brought plunges everywhere because we just wanted people... When you think about cold plunging, you think about SweatHouz. So that's become a big part of our playbook. But the systems that SweatHouz gives franchisees and the playbooks that SweatHouz gives franchisees really do give us and our operators a leg up on, on other franchise brands, but as well as other mom-and-pop, uh, sauna and cold plunge places. Because we've opened 101 studios now, right? We've made the mistakes, we've learned from the mistakes, and we're gonna make 100 more mistakes, but if we learn from every mistake we make, the next franchisee is gonna be that much more successful. And then they're gonna make mistakes, and then th- that next franchisee will be that much more successful. And I think, y- you know, my biggest thing is we have to learn from our mistakes and build upon them.
Sean Donovan: How long do people tend to stay members once you guys acquire customers?
Nico Varano: Right now, our average member lifetime is about eight and a half months. Now, we want to extend that to the likes of fitness. You know, fitness is closer to about 10 to 11 months. That's our goal right now. We've been lucky to build a client lifetime of eight and a half months without gamifying the system yet, without really building in the member rewards. So I think that our next chapter at SweatHouz is really focused on that. How do we build gamification? How do we build community while still sticking to private suites? And how do we get members to feel the rewards and the perks that they wanna stay a member for another month, a month and a half, uh, so that we get to that 10, 11 months that we're really chasing?
Sean Donovan: How does it work, like, in terms of private suites, how many members you guys have? Like, how often are people going?
Nico Varano: It's, it's, it's a great question, and we track utilization pretty heavy. What is the habit of a person, and how can we make taking 60 minutes to yourself once a week, twice a week, part of somebody's habit? When we look at it, we have a 2X, a 4X, an 8X, and an unlimited membership. Those are our tiers, and that's all per month. So our unlimited members come on average about, uh, nine times a month. We have some people that come 30 out of 30 days, and those are the people that, you know, we get to know by name. We understand what type of cold compress they want, what do they want on the s- the in-suite TV when they walk in. Our 8X members come on average about six times a month, and then 4X members come on average two and a half, and 2X members come on average about one to one and a half times a month. We're con- constantly trying to find ways to get them to utilize their membership f- to their full potential. We also wanted to add optionality, so if you can only come in once every two weeks, do a 2X membership, right? It's about what fits your schedule, because all we want at the end of the day is we want you to build a habit around taking time for yourself, taking 60 minutes. So if you can only come in twice a month, that's fine. We just wanna be there when you need us. You asked a great question about how many members can a studio hold. When we first set out on this journey, you know, I think we wanted 400 members per studio, 500 members per studio. The real number is closer to 250 to 300 members, and here's why. A big part of our revenue is actually made up by pack holders. So maybe it's somebody that doesn't want to, you know, have a recurring membership, right? And our membership's a month to month, so there's no long-term commitment. But somebody may say, "Oh, I don't, you know, I don't wanna have a membership." Some people don't like that word, right? Like, we're actually looking at adding more packs to our pricing offerings, as well as adding even shareable packs where you can share them with another individual. Which again, it- that's how you start to build in some layers of community while also driving up utilization so that people burn through their packs quicker and then wanna re-up on that next pack
Sean Donovan: I know you talked about the launch and the aspects of events. Are events the core marketing engine behind getting new members and getting the word out even still?
Nico Varano: No, I, you know, I think events is part of the grassroots playbook we have. You know, it's not the number one way we do it. If you look at the way we drive people into the studio, grassroots is a portion, but the other portion is digital marketing, right? Obviously, we spend a lot of marketing dollars on Meta, in TikTok, in Google to drive in, to drive in as many leads as we can into our infrastructure, and then that's where we start texting them and emailing them, and they enter our client journey. Where, where I think we've had the most success over the past few years is leveraging user-generated content in our ads that it feels more relatable. So for example, if you see people that you follow on Instagram or on TikTok in a UGC ad that's cut up a bunch of different ways, and we then put marketing dollars behind that, that ad is more likely to convert a lead to an intro session. And the biggest thing we track internally is cost per intro. So instead of tracking cost per lead, we're actually tracking the cost per person that buys an intro session. Again, we spend on digital marketing, we spend on grassroots. You know, one doesn't work without the other. You could have a really successful digital campaign, but if you're only focused on the digital campaign, at some point your top of the funnel's gonna run dry, right? So you always have to be diversifying your channels. So I mentioned Google, TikTok, bunch of channels we're working on. You have to be partnering with the SolidCores, the Barry's, the YogaJoints, the Jetsetpilates. You have to be their recovery partner in a way. Maybe you offer them special rates, or maybe you bring a plunge to their, to their wellness studio.
Sean Donovan: How does it work in terms of the franchise model for marketing? Is each location responsible for their individual market?
Nico Varano: What's interesting is we actually have a team internally. We have a paid media team that actually buys ad placement on Meta internally. So the franchisees in our system allocate a budget to us every month, and then we provide them with the performance of those ads, and we have analytic dashboards that we have built in-house that, you know, I would stack up against any major company, major franchise. We've built data analytics platforms in-house that really rival that of major companies, so that every day you can check, "How did my ads perform the previous day?" I can see what was my cost per lead and my cost per intro, which is the metric I mentioned earlier, and what's working, what's not, and can we make changes on the fly. You know, we're always, always, always looking at data to make sure that our ads are working and that franchisees wanna continue to invest their marketing dollars with us so that we can drive, uh, leads and intros for them.
Sean Donovan: So then they kind of get like a plug and play community aspect of things.
Nico Varano: That was exactly the framework that was, uh, set on the outset of this brand, is how can we do paid media internally so that franchisees can, can be the ambassadors in their community?
Intro VO: Now,
Nico Varano: there are other elements as we continue to diversify channels of marketing where we may call upon a third party to say, "Hey, you know, will you guys work on Google for us? Will you work on TikTok for us? Will you work on YouTube for us?" But we like to control the marketing spend as a company because we think we can help franchisees take that off their plate, and then they can allocate their time and their focus not only to the grassroots marketing, but just operating their studios, giving that sense of hospitality, right? It's great if we give you 200 intros a month, but if you don't have hospitality in today's world, you ain't gonna make it. The, the concept won't survive. So hospitality is something big we really talk about
Sean Donovan: Now that you've shifted from the franchisee seat into the CEO role, how has your time and role changed?
Nico Varano: Yeah, it's definitely been a big change. I-- You know, if you ask anybody on my Boston team, uh, I'm, I'm a very hands-on operator. You could probably see me at any of the five studios every day, whether it was, you know, talking to clients, helping work a shift, talking to managers to see what the pain points were, fixing a, a plunge in case one of the chillers decided to, uh, have a minor issue that day or was being temperamental that day. You know, coming to Atlanta, that was the biggest change for me. But luckily, you know, because I got to see a few franchisees in our system and how they scaled, and I got to see how, you know, obviously Jamie Weeks and, and the founder of SweatHouz scaled his own Orange Theory platform by building and hiring the right people, I'm-- I was able to build my Boston team to the point where they didn't need me, right? I'm still involved, I'm still around virtually, but I'm also now focused on how do I build more studios in Boston while also building the SweatHouz brand and company as a whole. You know, my commitment and why I wanted to come down and take this role was because I believe what Jamie and the team built with SweatHouz is the future. It's-- In my opinion, there's no wellness brand like it. There's no experience like SweatHouz, and we haven't even scratched the surface on what's possible in terms of making the client journey that much better, in terms of gamifying the client lifetime journey, in terms of thinking about how do we become the place, that third, fourth space that people talk about now, where you can totally get that digital detox, but you're also g-getting some really great health benefits as well.
Sean Donovan: What's the vision for you? Are you guys just at square one with franchising nationwide, like in terms of number of locations that you guys have? Are you focused on improving the economics of per location?
Nico Varano: You know, we have 101 studios across 25 states right now, which is pretty awesome, right? To think back to when this started in 2019 with one contrast therapy studio. In February of 2024, we opened the first V2 SweatHouz, which is the model we have currently where it's saunas, cold plunges and showers all in the same suite. It's one contrast therapy suite in all, and then you probably have seven to nine in each studio. So in two and a half years, from February 2024 We opened up 80 plus V2 SweatHouz Studios. That's a lot of growth in two years. Now, what happens in that is after you grow like that in a certain period, you evaluate. You see, all right, we grew really fast, we scaled really fast. What worked and what broke? And how do we fix the areas that broke? So when you ask, what is my focus now? The focus is how do we continue to grow at the clip we're growing, and what improvements can we make to speeding up scalability, right? So that the larger franchisees can continue to rip doors open, uh, little by little. Um, but it's also where in our four wall economic model do we have opportunity? How do we drive that client lifetime value even higher? How do we get another month of, uh, client, uh, lifetime? How do we lower attrition, uh, to single digits? How, how do we drive more four wall margin out of every incremental dollar of revenue? That is all we're focused on right now, and that's why we're in the process of developing a new app. That's why we're in the process of developing new membership, uh, perks. And that's why we're totally rethinking our revenue architecture to add more packs to the model as well, so that we keep people in the flywheel a bit, a bit longer, right? Maybe you come out of your first session, you, you don't really want a membership right away. Maybe you need a smaller pack to start first. So that's what we're really focused on right now. It's not just keep growing, growing, growing. That's gonna happen as long as we fix some of the stuff that broke along the way
Sean Donovan: On average, how many doors does a franchisee open? I know you mentioned like some of the bigger franchisees focusing on opening more doors at a rate that they want to.
Nico Varano: So we have some franchisees that have hit that, uh, magical number of 10. One of our franchisees, they have a great team led by Hunter Mitchum, Wichita, Kansas, and Chicago area. We have another group called Traction Wellness Group, Doug Felton and Lewis Bal- Balcomb, great job as well. They're approaching 10 studios as well. On average, we only have 40 franchisees, so to have 100 studios, 17 of those we own at corporate, so to have 84 studios owned by franchisees with only 40 franchisees, on average, everybody owns two. But in that mix, some haven't opened one yet and some have opened multiple. But we kept our group, and one of the things the original executive team really wanted to do is keep a really small group of franchisees that are former execs in marketing, former execs in leadership, former multi-unit retail operators. Our group of franchisees is super strong, and I think that's what has propelled our growth as fast as we've grown.
Sean Donovan: I don't know how to ask this outside of like a very direct question, but-
Nico Varano: Direct. We- we're, we're friends at this point, so direct is fine. Yeah.
Sean Donovan: I mean, like how profitable are the locations after opening? I know you m- mentioned like a focus on filling recurring revenue before you even open the door.
Nico Varano: Yeah. Look, you know, it obviously differs by pricing tier, but I'll talk specifically about my Boston studios and then I'll open it up to the rest. My Boston studios on average operate at about a 30% full wall margin, so really healthy full wall operating margins. Across the country right now, we're operating at about a 22 to 23% full wall margin. A lot of those studios are still in their first six to 12 to 18 months, so that number will continue to scale. Our gold north star, uh, as you would call it, would be 30% across the board, and we're working our way there by driving not only top line... And again, I'll go back to this model's really all fixed cost, right? You know every month you know your payroll's gonna be pretty much the same. Your rent doesn't change. Your utilities really don't change month to month. Your marketing, you're the one deciding if you wanna boost it or decrease it by your performance, so you really know your nut of expenses the first day of the month, so you know what to go chase in sales, and for every additional dollar you generate in sales as a franchisee, about 85% of those flow through to the bottom line, which allows us to drive meaningful margin upside as b- as units continue to scale.
Sean Donovan: What's like the most challenging aspect of this business? Is it- Controlling customer acquisition costs, finding new customers
Nico Varano: So contrast therapy right now is having a, a, you know, a moment, and it's been a moment for a little bit. So acquiring customers isn't actually the hard part. It's giving them the options to stay in the flywheel, right? And that's something we're very focused on right now, having a revenue architecture that meets everyone where they need to be met, right? Every, you know, not everybody's gonna be an unlimited member. The most challenging part with scaling this business and why I think a lot of people and a lot of other concepts haven't done what we're doing is because you're doing something. You're putting a sauna, a cold plunge, and a vitamin C shower within 120 square feet in a suite. That sauna's gonna produce heat. Your cold plunge is constantly trying to chill itself. So our biggest challenge has been somewhat on the equipment side, but again, we all got into this knowing that we were doing something that hadn't been done before. So those are the challenges we like. We're, we're working on it. We're fixing it day by day. But I'd rather, much rather have that problem than the problem of nobody's interested in what we're doing. There's maintenance tied to it, and again, we're doing something that a lot of people wouldn't choose to do in terms of other businesses, right? You look at other concepts out there, they're mainly doing communal or they're doing one or two contrast therapy suites in their business. Because I think it, it takes a special brand to do what we're doing and put up with some of the maintenance issues you might
Sean Donovan: have. It is interesting, the, because it's such an intimate experience.
Nico Varano: Well, let me tell you what really makes me like SweatHouz more than the communal. You know, I wanna make sure I mention, you know, what Othership is doing and what Remedy Place is doing. The communal is very cool, but what SweatHouz does so well is the privacy. We get people that may not feel comfortable going to that. But additionally, if you go to Othership or if you go, go to one of these communal places, that's probably something you do once a month, right? Maybe you go to Othership, you do, uh, one of their breathwork classes in the sauna, you do the cold plunge, and it's an amazing, incredible experience. I can't speak more highly of what they're doing. But when you come to SweatHouz, it's not about that. It's about having a private space where you can totally disconnect. This thing, the phone, is the wor- is the worst thing in the world. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop dinging. The emails, the texts, the Slack messages, the pings, the pongs, it, it, it doesn't stop. When you go to SweatHouz, it does, 'cause you're choosing for that 60 minutes to prioritize yourself. When I first got into SweatHouz, there was this saying of, you know, one hour, 60 minutes, is only 4% of your day. If you can take 4% of your day to yourself in a private suite, not only will you perform better in whatever your next workout may be or whatever your next HYROX competition may be, but you'll think better, you'll feel lighter, you'll be happier. At the end of the day, what we're selling is dopamine. Jamie used to say it all the time himself. We are selling dopamine via our s- our private suites. You're in that sauna. You're in that cold plunge. You leave feeling a lot better than you did coming in
Sean Donovan: How do you think about scaling the number of locations? Is it really just focusing on the per location metrics and knowing that you'll attract the right franchisees over time based on the business working?
Nico Varano: I'm a firm believer that the best way to sell licenses in franchising is by having happy franchisees. If franchisees are successful, they're driving top line, driving bottom line, they're able to build new studios and see really good paybacks, the business builds itself. Everybody wants to file in. The second part that helps is building a brand that owns the word contrast therapy. A brand that excites people, a brand that makes people say, "Wow, I need to go to this place because everybody's going there." If you conquer those two things, you have successful franchisees and you have a really amazing brand You win. Point blank, there's no doubt about it, you win in the long run.
Sean Donovan: What are you most excited about right now in terms of the business now that you've kind of gone through the transition from franchisee into the CEO role?
Nico Varano: The most exciting thing to me is what we will do in the early fall of this year. We're gonna launch an app that I personally believe will change the way in which contrast therapy is thought about. It will change the way in which people think about recovery, and not just physical recovery, mental recovery too. Everybody wears wearables nowaday, and wearables are great, and we're gonna have the opportunity to tie in wearables to our app. But you don't have to wear a wearable to see performance growth. You don't have to wear a wearable to understand that you feel better. And we're gonna launch this new app in early fall that I believe will fix our lifetime of a client, that will make our brand synonymous with contrast therapy, and that will really be a game changer, in lack of better words. And I'm excited to unveil it to the masses in early fall.
Sean Donovan: How long have you guys been working on the app?
Nico Varano: I started January 5th officially. Believe it's been in the works since January 6th. We're, we're really excited. We have a, a, a great app today, but this next app is going to be more than just, you know, a booking software. It's going to, you know, include rewards. It's going to include a special score, which I won't name yet because we're still working on the naming convention, but, you know, picture a, picture a credit score, right? Where it goes up and down based on the habits you're building at SweatHouz that ties into maybe a wearable or the steps you take. We're really excited. We're gonna try to hit all angles at once, both digital detox, as well as the recovery benefits you see at SweatHouz.
Sean Donovan: Do you have plans to continue opening your own franchise locations too?
Nico Varano: Absolutely. I wouldn't be any good as a CEO if I stopped my own growth. You know, every day I look franchisees in the eyes, and we all made the same decision to get into this brand, and we all made the same decision to open up studios. Uh, so I'm not taking my foot off the pedal at all. Uh, I actually just signed a lease Friday. I'm rocking and rolling. Hopefully by early February we will be up to eight studios from our current five studios in Boston. Yeah, so exciting, exciting times. And, you know, I, I love seeing what SweatHouz can do for people. You might have people come in that have never been in a gym before, right? They, they're not gonna go to a Community Sauna 'cause they don't feel comfortable We also have the people that do HYROX that got, you know, they have more abs than I have fingers and toes, and they love what we do at SweatHouz as well.
Sean Donovan: In terms of, like, balancing your time with the CEO position and then also opening locations, how has that been for you?
Nico Varano: One of my weaknesses, and I got a whole lot of them, I don't think we have enough time on this episode to go through each one, has always been time management and priority management. I'm one of those people, I'd rather just work around the clock and try to get to it all. So what I'll say is my Boston studios, because we have a, a great team there, you know, I've been able to sort of step back a little bit. But I also probably haven't given them the, the TLC that they need, uh, which is something I'm working on, you know, personally, is dedicating time better and, you know, making sure I'm going and seeing the team. Because if you build a business where it's centered around how much effort you put in, and that's how I built the Boston studios, and then one day, poof, you disappear and you're in Atlanta, you naturally see some areas start to underperform, and that's where I have to do a better job making sure people know I'm still involved. But there is nothing other than the birth of my first daughter, which happened ex- about a month ago now, it's been a heck of a month, but there is nothing more important to me personally than making sure SweatHouz is successful. And I'm not saying that because I want it to be successful for me. I want it to be successful for the 40 franchisees we have. I want it to be successful for the 10 to 15 employees we have at every studio. I want it to be successful so that for 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, clients can still come into SweatHouz and enjoy the benefits. Because what we are doing for people, and the wins we're seeing for our clients, in my opinion, are next level. Whether that's weight loss, whether that's mental health. And the mental health benefits we've seen, I mean, I could go on and on with stories of just how we've, you know, we've made people stop drinking. And this is no medical advice by any means, but I've seen people that have come in with drinking problems stop drinking because they started going to SweatHouz twice a week. I've seen smokers stop smoking because they started going to SweatHouz. It's a drug in its own form, and it's the best type of drug you can get for yourself
Sean Donovan: It also seems like a good concept in the wake of AI and people leaning back more into physical experiences
Nico Varano: Absolutely. You know, AI is amazing. Uh, you know, I'm doing things with Claude and Manus now that I have no business doing. And we're looking into that on the business side of, you know, agentic learning and how does that impact your CRM, and we're testing a lot of things right now. And that's the way you can make people feel, both the service but also the hospitality that that person gets when they walk into a SweatHouz studio. You know, where I greet and say, "Hey, Sean, I know you've been training for a marathon. How you feeling? How are you using SweatHouz in your training process?" And then when you come out of your session, say, "Sean, how many minutes do we do in the cold plunge today? I know you gotta get those legs ready for the marathon." That special one-to-one relationship you and I can have in a studio because it's very intimate, because you are in a private suite and you're just coming in and out of that private suite, that's special. I don't care what, uh, Anthropic creates, I don't care what OpenAI creates, nothing can replace that level of hospitality and that level of service. And that's why when I talk to the SweatHouz studios across the country, I always finish with hospitality. It costs us nothing, zero dollars and zero cents, to be nice to people, to smile when they walk in, and to get to know everybody's name that decides to be a member or a recurring pack holder. Cost us nothing at all to do that.
Sean Donovan: How's it been since your daughter's birth? I'm about to have my third.
Nico Varano: God bless. Congratulations.
Sean Donovan: Yeah. Thank you.
Nico Varano: So it's been... Like, it puts a lot of things in perspective. You know, I'm somebody that loves to work around the clock, and after my daughter was born, the next day I think I was already back at work. But you find those pockets of time because you only... You know, life isn't an audition. So just finding those moments, be with me. It also makes me, a businessman, wanna do better, right? I want her to be able to say, "Wow, my dad and his team and that team built that, and that's really cool." And I want SweatHouz to be around, you know, when she's 18 and, you know, she- whether she's running track or playing soccer, whatever she's into, be able to go to SweatHouz, uh, so she can enjoy the same benefits
Sean Donovan: Definitely puts things into perspective
Nico Varano: If you have any tips, uh, for a first-time dad, please let me know. I'm learning. I don't sleep anyway, but I'm learning that sleep is very valuable these days
Sean Donovan: Sleep is very valuable. It's also funny how you, before kids, you always think that you don't have enough time, and then after kids, you realize like, "Oh my God, I had so much time."
Nico Varano: Yep That's
Sean Donovan: crazy. Yeah, I, I guess it always feels like that anyways, so it never really matters, and you just find a way to fit what you need to fit
Nico Varano: Yeah, e- e- exactly. Like, I was always... There's a couple people I look up to, and a mo- and one of them is my dad. He would work at the restaurant from 11:00 AM to basically 2:00 in the morning every day, nonstop. But if there was a, you know, a dance recital for my sister, he always found the time, no matter how busy the restaurant was or no matter how many people he had waiting outside, to be there. Mom and dads are, are pretty special. The sacrifices they make, and I consider myself pretty lucky to be among that group now of, of a dad or a mom that gets to spend, uh, gets to spend time, you know, making time
Sean Donovan: How often do you travel to the various franchises throughout the country?
Nico Varano: Honestly, you know, I'd probably say once a month I try to get out to other studios, other franchisees, and it's not enough. I gotta spend more time getting out there. Problem is, if I have a free moment to travel, I like to go to my studios in Boston. But that's something I definitely need to do a better job of is, you know, go see our studios in San Francisco, go see our studios in LA, go see our studios down in Florida. What's cool is when you go to all, see all the studios, you pick up learnings, right? What I do in Boston may not be what they do in Florida, but what they do in Florida may be working much better, and there's so many learnings. That's the cool thing about franchising. You know, some, some people like the word franchising, some people don't. When you have really smart people, there's so much opportunity to learn from these people. I, I said it to somebody today. I said, "I think my, my chapter of involvement as CEO at Sweathes," and knock on wood, hopefully it's a long time, "but I want franchisees to be able to have a voice." Because they're putting in a lot of money to open these studios, they're working in these studios, they're making them successful, and they should have a s- a seat at the table. Be part of the decisions that help make this brand, the n- to help design the next chapter of this brand, I should say. And that's been a really big part of my last six months, first six months in the role, just really getting the franchisees involved
Sean Donovan: It seems like an exciting time. I love the concept. I feel like it's well-positioned for growth, and I'm curious to, to stay in touch as you guys continue to expand. Thank you for taking the time to talk too
Nico Varano: No, no. Thank, thank you for having me. Uh, you've had some amazing guests, so again, I feel very honored to even be involved in this, and really appreciate you taking the time to, to spend some with me
Intro VO: Bread received