{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Luba Show","title":"Robbie Bent: From Near Death to Building a Multi-Million Dollar Wellness Cult ","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":5002,"description":"Today I’m talking to Robbie Bent, CEO and co-founder of Othership. Othership has scaled from a DIY backyard ice bath to a cult-like wellness brand with multiple sold-out locations across North America and plans to open a first-of-its-kind “social spa” on the Upper East Side.\nRobbie is a former drug addict-turned founder who’s built something genuinely novel: a space where emotional processing and human connection are the product, and sauna and cold plunge are the delivery mechanisms. What’s rare about his story is that he’s done it with four co-founders — two couples working full-time together after seven years — and he’s obsessive about building the best version of the product, not the fastest path to profit.\nWe talk about the long-term vision, the willingness to go all-in on something nobody thought would work, and what it means to build a company around healing and community in a culture obsessed with optimization. Robbie gets vulnerable about the financial terror of physical retail, the near-death moments when he thought it was over, and why he turned down aggressive investor terms to maintain control and equity.\nTopics covered\n- From backyard experiment to $2M+ first location — and how he knew it was real\n- Why he thinks fear doesn’t disappear when you succeed — it just evolves\n- The almost-zero odds of building a successful company with two couples as co-founders\n- How a sauna and cold plunge became a Trojan horse for emotional healing and friendship\n- Why he’s terrified of competition (and how that terror drives everything he does)\n- From ADHD, boredom with early fatherhood to being present — the shift that changed his priorities\nSO much more!\nTimestamps 00:00 Intro 01:52 The 20-year vision 05:50 Horse trough to $2M 10:00 Building with 4 co-founders 15:39 The New York crisis 22:10 Why didn't he quit 24:25 What still scares him 27:19 The social spa experiment 31:16 Does fear ever disappear? 34:00 His anxiety toolkit 39:25 Health and clarity 40:21...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/I2NZEo1VpOK6gNlq1ogpu-hfbOWZMEOuC4oDFfuUFGk/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8zODI0/ZWE4OTEyOGMzODcw/OGI2ODY5ZWY0YTIz/YzQzMi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}