Laura Fullerton, The Ice Bath Queen On Creating a Brand from Cold

0:01Jeannette:Welcome back to Brave Bold Brilliant. I'm Jeannette Limfoot, portfolio business owner, investor and advisor. And over the past 30 years, I've built businesses across multiple industries globally. And it is through Jeannette Limfoot Associates Limited and Brave Bold Brilliant that we help ambitious leaders scale their success and achieve the freedom they truly deserve. Now this podcast is where we explore powerful stories from people who've built remarkable lives. Stories of courage, innovation and purpose. And today I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined by Laura Fullerton, founder and chief creative officer of Monk, one of the UK's most exciting wellness tech companies.

0:46Jeannette:It's all about cold water immersion. You know, so Laura is redefining how we think about performance, resilience and human optimisation. You know, from building and exiting startups to raising millions in funding and leading a movement that blends neuroscience design and well-being. You know, Laura's story, it really is a masterclass in innovation, courage and purpose. You know, and this conversation explores what it truly means to build a business and a life that's in harmony, you know, where success, creativity and well-being can coexist beautifully. So let's dive into the show.

1:29Jeannette:Welcome to Brave Bold Brilliant. I'm here today with the wonderful Laura Fullerton, who is the founder and chief creative officer of Monk. Welcome, Laura.

1:40Laura Fullerton:Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

1:42Jeannette:Oh, you are very welcome. And listen, we're going to hear all about your business journey and sort of early life, where you are today, all the great things you're doing with the business, some of the ups and the downs, the challenges, the highs, the lows, because we like to obviously keep it real and share the real story about business and entrepreneurship. So, but what I want to do first of all, Laura, is I just want to sort of take us back a little bit in terms of what was the catalyst for you actually starting your own business and deciding okay I'm going to become an entrepreneur what was the starting point well the do you know

2:15Laura Fullerton:the answer is different for for two different businesses so my very first business was a health and fitness subscription box and I started it because I just couldn't stop thinking about it I find a lot of founders I speak to say I just didn't want to work for anyone else but it wasn't that wasn't the case for me at all I was just like a moth to a flame it just got to the point I was like I've just got to do this um but then my journey into Monk was quite different because it came from pure frustration. I fell in love with cold water therapy, which was completely out of the blue because I've always hated being cold.

2:48Laura Fullerton:So the irony now that I'm running Monk is not beyond me. But yeah, there was just nothing on the market that met my needs. Either products were crazy expensive, they're about around£12 ,500, which was just out of my budget. Or, you know, you've got DIY ice tubs. I actually nearly bought a chest freezer and turned it into my own ice bath. And, And, you know, I was going down this rabbit hole trying to figure out how do I do it and not get electrocuted. And it just got to the point. I thought, why is there no one doing this? Like, surely there's something bigger here.

3:18Jeannette:Right. OK, so let's explore Monk a little bit. So it's cold water immersion, which is obviously like the big thing, isn't it, right now? It seems to be everyone. And I live on, I live in, well, I'm very lucky to live very close to a beach in the summer. So, you know, I do do a little bit of the cold water dipping in the sea. But I must admit, oh, I'm a bit like you. I'm a bit of a freezer. So I do find it, I do struggle with it. But it has exploded as a kind of whole well-being, almost like a movement, really, isn't it now? But explain what Monk does, because you've got some very clever, not just the cold water immersion, but some clever tech as well that goes hand in hand.

3:56Jeannette:So explain what Monk does, because then people might be going, oh, my God, I've got to have one of these in my life.

4:02Laura Fullerton:where can i get it so we have set out to create the most transformative two minutes of your day so we launched our flagship product which is a smart ice bath which teaches you how to use cold water therapy safely and effectively so it's a really beautiful you know piece of hardware that you'd be proud to have in your home in your garden but we also have a companion app that goes with it that acts as your cold water coach and i guess it's it's a little bit like comparing a stationary bike to a peloton you know when you've got the instructors the music and you're doing this class and it's just this really immersive experience that's essentially what we've created with monks you've got guided plunges so whether you're doing an anxiety reset or an acclimatization program which is perfect for beginners you've got this you know guided audio these beautiful soundscapes that are just taking you through the journey so you actually understand what's happening in your body because especially if you're a complete beginner you know getting into freezing cold water it's not the most appealing thing so we can actually take people on a journey and give them the confidence that they're doing it right and they're getting the most benefits they can um yeah so that's that's essentially what what we do all right well and actually check out the website

5:08Jeannette:anyone that's listened to this because it is really impressive i have to say um and of course you've got anthony joshua haven't you as as a real kind of champion for for your products and what

5:19Laura Fullerton:have you how did you get him involved so my chairman at the time knew his team i think they nearly did a deal previously in a in a different life and we were about to go out and raise our our friends and family around and he just thought we'll ping the deck over to them and it turns out AJ loves cold water therapy and his team were just sick of buying bags of ice every day to put into his bath at home because you know there was no product on the market that he wanted to have um and so it was just a really great fit and so yeah he came on on board as one of our first investors I think a lot of people think oh how much did you pay him I'm like no he he paid us

5:55Jeannette:what a perfect combination you get you know an elite athlete that's a really well-known

6:01Laura Fullerton:personality and is giving you money as well yeah and he you know he invested when it was just an idea i didn't even have a picture of what monk looked like but you know he's a super sharp guy he's not just you know an incredible athlete but he could look at it and say actually i see something in this like i want to stand behind that and back that and yeah he's he's been a phenomenal support

6:19Jeannette:yeah fantastic so the name monk it doesn't necessarily immediately make you think of cold water therapy as a brand you might think something completely different you might think of i don't know someone going around in their in their robes as a monk or or you know some kind of retreat or something like that so what was the inspiration behind the brand and and how you've actually built the brand up as well as the product offering because i think that's a really interesting area that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with you know how do you get the name that kind of sticks what does the brand value what does it stand for so yeah where's the inspiration for Monk and how have you actually taken the brand forward would you say yeah so with the name I

7:03Laura Fullerton:wanted something that wouldn't pigeonhole us into cold water therapy I actually I loved the name Gasp because you know it reflects that moment you get in and you have that like sharp inhale but I wanted something that was broader and something that speaks to the fact that you know this isn't a new practice this is you know people talk about it dates back to 5000 BC Hippocrates talked about the benefits of cold water therapy so there's nothing new but we're just bringing it into you know the 21st century and I remember it's actually a really bizarre story I was brainstorming ideas with a friend one night and I said the name monk and then thought nah forget it and my friend was like no no I really like it and you know we got super hyped up about it and then the next morning he sent me a picture and just said I kid you not this just landed on my doorstep I didn't order it there's no notes no sender and it was the book the monk who sold his Ferrari and so I just thought oh that's got to be a sign um and so yeah we just secured the domains we're at um it's discovermonk.com and you know at discovermonk on on social we couldn't get monk on its own um but yeah I thought it was just it was meant to be and I think for a long time so we were in product development for basically three years it took a long time to to bring monk to market it turns out building a product that hasn't actually been been built before with the hardware and the software and the firmware all together it's quite a big task didn't know that at the beginning um and so actually i think we built a stronger brand than you know we were brand led rather than product led at the beginning um and i think having yeah just a strong brand has really helped us sail through and and to your point you know cold water therapy has been booming particularly around covid i think that really i mean there are so many macro forces at play but it really allowed people to realize actually I'm in control of my health and people started turning to these more holistic practices and you know Wim Hof did amazing things to promote cold water therapy and the people that do it are so passionate about it and you know on Instagram you always have that man with a sign saying you know you can cold plunge without talking about it and but it really taps into that thing that people want to tell people about it um which is which has been great for us so I think developing a brand that has really strong values you know around things like resilience has just allowed people to really want

9:13Jeannette:to be part of it and so when so three years in development then lauren like you say you know it sounds like you were learning as you were as you were kind of developing on the journey so three years in development and then actually brought the products and the brand fully to market what year was that when did you actually properly launch would you say i'd say earlier this year so

9:36Laura Fullerton:So we actually, last year, November 24, is when we started delivering products. So by April, we'd fulfilled all of our pre-orders. So at that point, we were really, yeah, fully in market.

9:48Jeannette:Right. And how was the sort of first year of trading, operating, would you say, well, nearly full year? How's it been that time? Because that's very different, isn't it? You know, this is your product that's been under wraps, you've been developing numbers, and you release it to the world. how did that feel and how's the year been there for you it's been such a transformative year

10:10Laura Fullerton:yeah from going for from essentially a pre-revenue pre-product business to suddenly being in market it's been amazing but it feels like we're at the start of our journey you know we spent those three years getting to the start line and now we're there um and we've just made so many learnings I think you know one of our our strategy really is just to test and learn as much as we possibly can on a smaller budget as possible and it's fascinating the things that work and don't work and you learn what you can scale and you know we're really building this business to to take it out to well the middle east in q1 next year which is really exciting so we're just figuring out that that blueprint finding our feet yeah there's there's been so many changes i bought in a ceo replaced myself um yeah it's it's it's been amazing but like any founder journey it's euphoric and it's brutal and it's just everything all rolled into one yeah so lots of learnings what

11:03Jeannette:were some of the standout learnings then for you laura that that then you've sort of responded to or you know you but you you might avoid in the future for example as you go forward so someone listening to this might be in exactly this similar kind of scenario so it's always helpful to share

11:18Laura Fullerton:what those learnings were for you yeah oh gosh so many a couple okay one off the top of my head is we when we launched monk you know we really wanted to set a new standard in cold exposure and our product is a six thousand pound price point which you know isn't achievable for a lot of people when you compare us to the nearest competitor on the market we're actually half the price and we have in my eyes like a much better product but again you know people will fall in love with the brand ritual but it's out of reach and sometimes that's not just price point for some you know maybe they rent they they don't have somewhere to have almost like a permanent set up some people travel they're between homes and so we listen to people and it wasn't about introducing a new product that's just cheaper but it was something that was more accessible so we recently launched uh nomad and shiver which is our kind of i need to find a way to describe rather than saying an inflatable because inflatable sounds cheap but it's you know this military grade material that they might make rafts from but it's a much more accessible price point so again it's just listening to the community and figuring out like where where to go next and we also realized a lot of our um customers the monk origin our flagship product was actually their second product they would send us videos and say and it's going to go here and replace this ice bath and it was always you know someone's first products we thought what if we could be that that product too um yes that was that was i guess an unexpected learning i wouldn't have thought that that would have been our second product when we started this journey um and another what I just mentioned uh I brought in a CEO that has been a honestly so transformative so I started Monk as a solo female founder and to be honest I would have loved to have had a co-founder but there was just no one there at the beginning who was the right person and it's a tough journey building building a company like Monk where you've got hardware firmware software and you know I'm a non-technical person it's been one hell of a journey um and yeah so I got introduced to this guy Gary who actually joined our board and he was just he's absolutely fantastic really solid background as a predominantly a chief product officer in connected uh hardware fitness companies taking them through from the early stages through to exit and he just added so much value and we spent so much time together and you know when you're talking to someone I was looking in his eyes thinking I need you to run this company with me um and it just it worked out really well timing wise and so yeah I managed to to bring him on board and it just it made sense to give him the CEO title so yeah it's uh it's a bit of a new chapter that's quite um a big move to make

13:57Jeannette:quite early you know because normally you'd have typically you know a founder would have built their business maybe even be five ten years even longer before they feel either ready to to make that move or the business kind of demands it because it's sort of outgrown the founder which can sometimes happen can't when businesses scale up but you've done it really early really in the journey and what do you think that was just because of him as an individual and and and the fit and the trust that was built there or was it in the back of your mind it wasn't in the back of your mind that I need to kind of get to get someone in to run the business it was him first

14:36Laura Fullerton:yeah I think if I'm honest I would have expected in I don't know three years or something like that that maybe I would transition into a different role because while I love so many aspects of the CEO role I've always been inherently a very creative person and this means I just get to lean it more into my strengths but yeah it definitely came up it was just the opportunity and I remember before I had the conversation with certain members of my board I was thinking oh god how are they going to take this they think I'm tapping out um but because you know he'd been in multiple board meetings they all knew him and actually after the first meeting they like three of them picked up the phone to me and said Gary is brilliant so everyone like really understood the value that he could bring and so it's you know it's very much him and I as a leadership duo um so yeah I'm I'm just really excited about it it's only been four months um but yeah so far it's it's great and it's been a really really good decision well i think the lesson here is as we're

15:33Jeannette:talking is around fit isn't it cultural fit shared values you know because i think as a as a i mean that's important in any business even even in a large corporate you know the culture is still really important and fit but i think in a small business when you're when you're in those early stages you want to be making sure that you're bringing people in that share the same values as you that are going to be the custodian of the brand as well just as you would be able to they can represent you as well as you know themselves so so i think cultural fit is so important and i see it where it goes wrong where people hire for skills and of course you need skills right that's a given but they pay less attention to the fit and the style and and the values and then that can end up in a you know a kind of conflict situation but so for you with this business and also with your previous experience how important are the values to what you've created and what would those values be Laura for a month would you say?

16:33Laura Fullerton:Yeah I would say values is such a big thing and I've noticed it previously in businesses when you're on a team call and you realize that it's not there and you're not aligned but at the time it doesn't seem like a particularly big deal so you know we'll have a team call and we'll be talking about i don't know the peptides we're trying or you know what activities we're up to the weekend and it just it always just makes sense and you know prime example with gary he was thinking about starting a podcast called do hard things and you know that's one of our values at monk do hard things which you know almost comes down to the product ethos itself you're going to get in freezing cold water which isn't overly pleasant or an enjoyable experience for a lot of people you're doing something hard but in order to come out the other side a better human um you know we've got another one um health comes first and you know we've got to live and stand by that but we just really advocate for people to to stick up for themselves and you know put their hand up and say look i'm i'm burning out i need time out or you know whatever it is but we really try and empower each other to to i guess live and live and breathe them

17:38Jeannette:if you're enjoying this inspiring conversation with laura fullerton make sure you follow brave bob brilliant on your favorite podcast platform and our youtube channel you know in each week i share conversations with extraordinary founders and leaders who are challenging the norm they're embracing bold thinking and creating meaningful impact so stay tuned we've got so much more ahead in this incredible discussion with Laura.

18:08Jeannette:So for yourself you're talking about living and breathing the values and the whole well-being you know aspects and I'm sure you're a cold water immersion enthusiast yourself Laura you'd be a bit bad if you weren't but you know it is tough in business sometimes and you can burn out and you know there's never a night it's not a nine-to-five job you know you you carry that risk with you all the time don't you it's hard you're pivoting one minute you're the cleaner the next minute you're the cfo the next minute you're you know you're the creator the next minute you're marketing so especially when you're starting there's a lot of pressure isn't there so what i'm interested is what are your kind of coping mechanisms over over and above the cold water side but what do you do to keep yourself in the best shape the best shape possible physically mentally um that you think has helped you on your journey and then the second part of this is have you ever got it wrong where you've gone out of kilter you've got really out of kilter out of balance and and you know and not been in a good place mentally and physically so yeah two parts of that laura yeah i'll start with the second part yes i have

19:14Laura Fullerton:definitely got it wrong so i i typically have a rule if i some of my non-negotiables which i'll tell you about in a second if i can't do them for three days in a row like something has to change because there's always going to be times where you miss a workout or you miss xyz but when it starts to become a habit that's when I really do try and pull it back but yeah there are things I do every single day and some of them I don't know maybe it sounds extreme but when I wake up I immediately drink some molecular hydrogen water and I sit on my pempf mat with my red light and do breath work so I stack all these things together so it only takes 20 minutes but that time is just my time and for like the breath work for me is really really important I just find it grounds me centers me gets me into a really good headspace rather than just picking up my phone if I look straight at my phone and get that blue light in the morning I give myself the ick it's just I know it's just not good um and then I I eat a protein breakfast straight away I'm sorry my doorbell's ringing hopefully can you hear that that's okay okay I'll just say that bit again and then I have a protein breakfast breakfast straight away being you know female and trying to optimize my hormones that's really really important and I always I'll do at least four workouts a week and some of those will be you know more kind of gentle like pilates or yoga depending on where I am in my cycle and actually that that's probably one thing so I try and live in line with my cycles that affects how I work out what kind of yeah like rest activities and and things I do and I just make sure I bake in more downtime when I need to um and another thing I've just started doing which really helps me relax are puzzles I've just released my inner 70 year old I love a puzzle and reading fiction as well those two things are amazing just for

21:06Jeannette:helping me switch off yeah there's loads in here isn't there because I I agree I mean I think as women as well we have to remember we have we have a we do have a hormonal cycle and for some women I mean, I'm menopausal, right? I mean, thank God I'm on the gel. I'm a big advocate, HRT, you know, for me, not just for every woman, but equally. But being aware of your body and changes in your body and in your cycle is so important because some days I think, you know, you could be trying to do your really important work at either a time of the day or a part of the week or the month where you're just not feeling it.

21:42Jeannette:Your energy's not there. maybe you're a bit low on iron or whatever you know if you're kind of in your cycle etc and I think so often we just try to push on through that without acknowledging it and I think that is a really important thing especially as a woman and men have their own kind of things going on as well it's not you know this is this is just difficult for women I think men have their own kind of challenges as well but that self-awareness and recognizing it and then And adapting, I think, is a really sound advice, actually, for women, you know. And when it comes to, you mentioned about the puzzle, right, which made me laugh because I often, my mum has got vascular dementia, unfortunately.

22:24Jeannette:She's in a care home. She's 88. But she's still in there, you know. She's still got that sort of glimmer of kind of the old, you know, our mum, she's still there at certain times despite the confusion. But I love doing a puzzle with my mum. I love it. Now, she might try and eat the pieces and I'll be doing a jigsaw. But you know what I mean? There's something quite therapeutic about doing a jigsaw or a word search or something that's not on a device. It's not on a device.

22:50Laura Fullerton:Yeah, it's old school. I love that you can share that with your mum. That's really sweet. How heartwarming.

22:56Jeannette:Yeah, yeah. And that's it, isn't it? I think we have to find those little moments. So when it's tough and when you said you haven't always got it right, have you ever suffered burnout then, Laura? or something close equivalent?

23:10Laura Fullerton:Yeah, for sure. I think multiple times I've been really close. And actually with Monk, I've been a lot better. In a couple of previous businesses, I definitely ran myself into the ground a lot more. With Monk, I still, I get quite close, but I know some of the signs. I get a sore throat whenever I'm getting close. And it might even happen just after a couple of intense weeks. And I know I've just got to chill out and try and do as little as possible. um I think what makes it really difficult for me and actually two days ago I found out that I have ADHD which I didn't know before always expected it but it just you know it kind of just makes sense um because one one thing I find is if I try and just do nothing and relax my mind is still in a million places and sometimes it's really hard to it's like I need to take a break from my mind more than anything else and and that's something I find quite challenging yeah yeah definitely and

24:03Jeannette:being able to sort of turn off so so it's our body often that gives us the warning signs even before our brain realizes there's something going on I think that's very true I mean I got very sick earlier this year I am I ended up being rushed into hospital a terrible stomach anyway I had a a blocked bile duct and my liver wasn't working and all this so I ended up having I mean thankfully it was nothing you know too serious but nonetheless I was in hospital for 10 days I I had gallbladder taken out and stuff. But it was a real wake-up call because I didn't realize just how hard I'd been pushing myself with the business, growing the business and all that kind of stuff.

24:41Jeannette:You know, my background is corporate, so I'm used to pressure. I'm used to doing big jobs and having half a billion turnover businesses and global teams. But nonetheless, I think when you are an entrepreneur, it is different. And you can have executive burnout in the corporate world. But as an entrepreneur, I think because you're never really off, you're never fully off. So you have to create those new boundaries for yourself, don't you? And what are some of the things that what are some of the things that you've learned about yourself as a leader on this journey? Do you think?

25:15Laura Fullerton:Do you know what I feel like I've actually learned more about myself as a leader in the last few months having bought in a CEO than I did when I was running it. And I think a lot of that comes from not imposter syndrome. Maybe it's just lack of confidence, you know, always thinking, oh, God, maybe I'm not the best leader. And because, you know, we're not necessarily taught this unless you've had a corporate role where you're in a leadership role, you likely haven't had training. So a lot of the time you're kind of just winging it or just, you know, implementing things from past experiences. but actually I've realized that it sounds really arrogant to say but I think I'm really good at cohesively like holding together a team making sure everyone's really clear on what they work on why we're all working on this and just trying to yeah just keep people on track and also keep people in the loop um my background previously was was actually from more of a marketing communication standpoint I think that well I like to hope a lot of my investors would say I'm really good at keeping them in the loop and I think just that clear communication telling people this is where we're at this is where we're going this is what's happened this is what we tried this what didn't work people just want to come along on that journey and I think that is actually a core part of

26:23Jeannette:of what leadership's about yeah I think you're right it's storytelling isn't it yes yeah you're you're storytelling externally to potential clients customers you're storytelling to investors your storytelling internally you're having to actually educate the market as well really um i know people know more about cold water therapy but i think there is still you know there's quite a lot of myths around it and like you say probably some trepidation is it safe is it not safe so you're having to educate as well aren't you through through monk and what you're doing

26:55Laura Fullerton:yeah constantly and actually do you know what writing blog posts is something i still love doing and yeah for us it's been really successful because it's that education people come to us saying like what are the benefits for xyz people want to know about weight loss and and all sorts and actually some of those have been the the best sources of traffic that we've got