Sometimes I Say Yes Before I Know How

Six months ago, Jason from Coya was putting together an event for the Grand Rapids YPO at the Ada Hotel. Coya does serious work in life coaching and optimization—professional sports teams, business leaders, people building better lives through wellness tools and sustainable practices.

Jason mentioned, almost casually, that it would be incredible if Nightjar could bring a sauna to the hotel parking lot. Take the event from a 7 to a 10. Give people a real experience, not just talk about wellness.

I had no idea how I was going to pull it off.

But I said yes.

Because that's how everything good starts—committing before having all the answers.

Six Months of Figuring It Out

Here's what I knew going in: whatever we built had to be authentically Nightjar. That meant a proper Finnish sauna experience—hot stove, plenty of rocks for löyly, quality construction with natural materials. A cold plunge that could handle Michigan weather. Something that looked as good as it performed.

No shortcuts. No compromises.

The problem with mobile saunas is that most of them sacrifice everything that makes a sauna actually good. Too cold, poorly ventilated, built with inferior materials. Designed to look like saunas more than to be saunas.

We weren't interested in building another one of those.

So we took our time. We iterated. We tested. We made it better, then made it better again. That constant theme running through everything we do—always asking "how can this be better?"

Yesterday Was the Day

The Nightjar Travel Sauna showed up in the Ada Hotel parking lot yesterday, and the YPO crew used it for hours. People moving between the heat and the cold, experiencing real contrast therapy, having those conversations that only happen in a sauna—that's exactly why we do this work.

This thing is truly 1 of 1. We built it to our standards, which are the standards we learned in Finland, from people who've been doing this for generations.

And now we get to bring that experience to West Michigan.

Events. Gatherings. Places where people want to introduce wellness in a way that's real, not performative.

I'm proud of how this turned out. Not because it was easy—it wasn't. But because we didn't compromise, and now we have something that actually works the way a sauna is supposed to work.

The Nightjar Travel Sauna is available for events throughout West Michigan. Email us to learn more about bringing authentic sauna and cold plunge to gatherings.