The Business of Sweat Launches First All-Female Founder Cohort for the Next Generation of Bathhouse and Community Sauna Entrepreneurs

The Business of Sweat, an online learning lab created to educate and connect the entrepreneurs building the next generation of bathhouses, community saunas, and thermal wellness businesses, has launched its fall cohort—the program’s first cohort comprised entirely of female founders.

The fall lab brings together women developing businesses across an emerging category that is expanding beyond traditional sauna culture into community spaces, product development, hospitality, wellness experiences, and new models of social connection.

The launch also marks the only program in the country that exists to guide a new class of entrepreneurs wanting to tap into the spirit of thermaculture within the American ecosystem of wellness with a dash of healthy hedonism.

The eight-week lab is led by Nell Waters, a ‘recovering bathhouse founder’ who now writes Get The Lowdown and operates Sweat Temples, a platform exploring the people, places, ideas, and culture shaping the American bathing movement. Sessions are co-facilitated by Sarah Spoto, Connecticut’s first sauna Aufguss master.

Organic demand has become one of the clearest signals behind the lab’s creation: as more creative visionaries enter the bathhouse and sauna category, there is a growing need for specialized education, strategic guidance, and connections to the people and companies already shaping the industry.

The fall cohort launched September 22 and runs through November 10.

For Waters, learning in community is a game changer that expedites growth. “Iteration happens more quickly when founders can refine their ideas, pressure-test their positioning, and build relationships that can actually help move their companies forward.”

A Bathing Lab for Builders

The lab’s flagship program is an eight-week online experience featuring live instruction from two well known leaders in the bathhouse and sauna space.

Participants work directly on their businesses while learning about the history, business models, positioning, operations, and evolving opportunities within the category.

Success stories and strategic connections are core to the program.

Rather than treating education as something separate from entrepreneurship, the lab is designed as a working environment where founders can develop their businesses while receiving strategic feedback and making connections across the industry.

The program was designed by Nell Waters, an expert on the history of bathhouses in the United States and is co-facilitated with Sarah Spoto, who spent years working in brand strategy for global automotive companies — an experience that informs her approach to building a category that is simultaneously experiential, operational, and consumer-facing. She also hosts a podcast, Badii Talk: Thermal Bathing & Sauna Culture, which explores global bathing traditions.

Their combined informs a curriculum focused on the practical paired with the passionate. In addition to the labs, cohort members receive direct mentorship from Waters and Spoto that can supercharge entrepreneurial insights.

The result is a program built for founders who are often creating businesses in categories that are still taking shape.

A Year of Beta Testing Is Already Producing Businesses

The strongest evidence of the lab’s approach comes from the entrepreneurs who have gone through it.

During the Winter 2026 cohort, several founders used the program to move their businesses into significant new phases.

Longevity Law: From a White Paper to the World Sauna Forum

Longevity Law entered the Winter Lab with a substantial body of work: its founder had developed a very large document outlining her thinking and expertise around risk architecture.

Over the course of the program, that thinking was refined into a clearer business proposition and pitch.

Just three months later, Longevity Law’s founder was a featured speaker at the 2026 World Sauna Forum in Helsinki, held in June.

The progression—from a working sketchup at the beginning of the Winter Lab to an international speaking platform three months later—illustrates the kind of transformation the lab is designed to facilitate: taking deep expertise and turning it into a focused, market-ready point of view.

Saint Lucie: Expanding the Retail Footprint and Moving Into White Label

St. Lucie’s Sauna Serum, another early cohort member, provides a different example of how founders can use the lab to advance an existing wellness business.

After completing the cohort, the specialty skincare company expanded its retail footprint and has recently taken another significant step by moving into white labeling its specialty formulas.

The evolution demonstrates the range of businesses the lab supports. While some founders are developing physical sauna and bathhouse concepts from the ground up, others are using the program to expand established products and expertise into new commercial opportunities.

CulDeSac: Sponsorship Through Civic Infrastructure

Also during the Winter program earlier this year, Gabe Bender, founder of CulDeSac, participated in the program through a scholarship provided by HARVIA, the heritage sauna brand and industry leader.

HARVIA’s involvement grew out of a relationship Waters began cultivating with the company’s U.S. team early in the development of the lab. She saw a natural connection between HARVIA’s focus on innovative design and the future-forward thinking emerging around American bathing.

For the lab, that relationship represents an important part of its broader mission: creating a bridge between the expertise and infrastructure of established industry players and the entrepreneurs imagining what comes next.

The Fall Cohort: A New Generation, Led by Women

The latest cohort brings that philosophy into its next phase with the lab’s first all-female founder lineup.

The entrepreneurs are developing businesses that move past traditional wellness to address ideas about what it means to participate in good civic life, designing rituals for belonging, and viewing hospitality as a circular gift that is always moving.

Their businesses represent a category that is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, invoking deep questions about community infrastructure, shared leadership, and, yes, strategic branding in a noisy marketplace. This cohort comes from Raleigh, Louisville, Detroit, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington State, Pennsylvania, and of course Northern California.

Waters describes the lab as an “indicator species” in the ecosystem for wellness. “As more candidates enroll it signals the overall market is maturing.”

Building the Infrastructure for What Comes Next

After one year of beta testing, The Business of Sweat is entering its next phase with a model that has already been shaped by the entrepreneurs it serves.

The businesses that have come through the program are now beginning to create their own momentum: Longevity Law’s appearance at the World Sauna Forum in Helsinki; a New York community sauna moving from weekend pop-ups toward a four-month residency; St. Lucie’s Sauna Serum expanding its retail presence and entering white labeling; and established industry support from Harvia.

For Waters and Spoto, those developments point to something larger than the success of an individual cohort.

They suggest that the next generation of bathhouse and sauna businesses is not simply waiting for the category to mature. They are actively defining what the category will become.

And the fall cohort represents the next group of founders stepping into that work.

What’s Next for American Bathing

Dates for their Winter cohort have been announced and they are accepting applications for 2027 on the Sweat Temples website.

For more information, visit www.sweattemples.com.