Founder’s Journal #3: What You Don’t See

If you looked at the last week from the outside, you would probably say it was an extremely successful week for C11.

On Wednesday night we were in Croke Park working directly with Leeds United for their game against Manchester United.

Less than 24 hours later, we were on the rooftop of Eden One launching our new Kuura cold plunge and our partnership with Eden One, surrounded by friends, family, customers and people who have supported us along the way.

Two really special days for C11.

But I suppose one thing I’ve realised lately is that what you see on social media is never really the full picture.

Personally, the last couple of weeks have been difficult for me.

There have been days where getting out of bed in the morning has been hard, never mind trying to run a business and keep everything moving at the pace we normally do.

I’ve always thought one of the difficult things about running a fast-moving start-up is that it never really stops. There is always somewhere to be, someone looking for an answer, a problem that needs fixing or something that needs to happen.

But over the last couple of weeks, something I probably used to see as a negative has actually become one of the things I’m most grateful for.

The structure.

Having somewhere to be every morning. Having a team around me. Having responsibilities. Having friends and family around me and sometimes just having something to take my mind off everything else.

I don’t know how many people read these Founder Notes or how many people will even make it to the end of this one.

But if there is one small business owner, founder, employee or just one person reading this who is going through a difficult time themselves, I think it’s important to remember that there are always people around you.

Sometimes you just have to let them in.

And even when it might not feel like it, there are better days around the corner.

Anyway, back to the week.

Leeds United at Croke Park

Over the last two years, C11 has changed quite a bit.

The distribution side of the business has grown massively and naturally that has taken up a lot more of our focus.

It has opened doors I never thought possible. We’ve installed recovery equipment into Premier League training grounds, players’ homes and some incredible facilities across Ireland and the UK.

But one thing I want to make a real effort to get back to is the mobile recovery side of C11.

Before distribution became such a big part of the business, mobile recovery was really at the core of what we did.

The recovery truck. Arriving at a stadium, hotel or training ground. Unloading the equipment and setting up a temporary recovery facility for players.

On a personal level, it is probably still the part of the business I enjoy most.

I absolutely love high-performing environments.

There is pressure. There is normally a short window to get everything right. The setup needs to be ready when the players arrive and there isn’t much room for mistakes.

I crave that environment.

To now be in a position where I can build a part of C11 around something I genuinely love doing is really exciting for me.

And Premier League football is somewhere I really want us to nail.

We have proven over the last 12 months that we can deliver permanent installations for these clubs.

Now I want C11 to become just as valuable when those teams are on the road.

Away games. European nights. Training camps. Pre-season tours.

How can we make sure that when those players walk into an away dressing room, they have access to the same level of recovery that they have at their own training ground?

There are already some really exciting conversations happening with a number of Premier League teams around supporting some of their away games throughout the 2026/27 season.

Even thinking about what that could look like excites me.

The idea that some of our weekends could be spent pulling a C11 recovery truck into places like Anfield, the Etihad or Old Trafford and setting up recovery equipment for some of the best players in the world is pretty mad.

Four years ago, I don’t think I could have imagined saying that.

Now it actually feels possible.

That’s why Leeds United travelling to Dublin to play Manchester United was such a good opportunity for us.

It wasn’t just a great fixture to be involved in.

It was a chance to test where I think this side of C11 can go.

And thankfully, we had a familiar place to start.

Croke Park.

Anyone who read my last Founder Notes about the All-Ireland Final will know how familiar we are with Croke Park at this stage.

We know the dressing rooms. We know the access. We understand the water and power requirements and all those small things that can become big problems when you arrive at a stadium you don’t know.

Around eight months ago, we had also fitted out Leeds United’s training facility, installing four Avantopool Kinos Plus units and renovating their sauna and plunge area.

So when I saw the Dublin fixture announced, I reached out to the contacts we had in Leeds and offered our services while they were in Ireland.

Thankfully, they took us up on it.

There was a little more involved than what we are normally used to with the GAA. Security and accreditation were understandably much tighter, so early in the week we made sure the truck, our staff and everything else were cleared with Croke Park.

On the day it was myself, Tommy and Cillian, along with Martti who had travelled over from Finland for our Eden One event the following evening.

We made sure he got the full C11 experience while he was here.

That morning Tommy and I had some work in Eden One and also met Gary Fox at his new studio, which we’re hoping to use monthly for some team meetings and content.

Meanwhile, Cillian had the recovery truck loaded with three cold plunges.

We all met at Croke Park around 12 o’clock and got to work.

Leeds had requested three cold plunges set at 10 degrees.

That’s one thing I’ve learned from working with different teams and different sports. Everyone has their own way of doing things.

Our job isn’t to come in and tell an elite performance team what they should be doing.

Our job is to ask what they need and make sure it is there for them.

Once everything was set up, the players arrived later that evening and Leeds very kindly gifted us a jersey signed by their captain.

That was a really nice touch and meant a lot to me personally.

I’ve always tried to take a small memory from the bigger events we work at.

We have flags, jerseys and different bits of memorabilia from events and teams we’ve worked with over the years.

When everything is moving so quickly, it is easy to finish one event and immediately start thinking about the next one.

Those little things remind me to stop sometimes and appreciate where C11 has taken us.

There was something else I noticed that evening which is hard to properly explain unless you’ve been around it.

There is just a different aura around some of these players.

Obviously I’m a Liverpool supporter, so I’m probably not supposed to say this, but seeing someone like Bruno Fernandes up close was pretty incredible.

It reminded me of some of the golf events we’ve worked at and seeing someone like Rory McIlroy up close.

When you see somebody who has reached that level in their sport, there is just something different about them.

It isn’t necessarily what they say or even what they do.

It is just the presence they have.

I felt that around some of the Leeds players we were working with and then obviously some of the standout Manchester United players on the other side.

I’ve been very lucky through C11 to be around some incredible athletes across golf, GAA, rugby and football, and it’s something I still find fascinating.

People who have excelled at what they do at the absolute highest level just seem to have a certain way about them.

I think that is another reason I’m so drawn to these environments.

I love seeing how these teams operate. How the staff work. How the players prepare. The standards they have and even the small details that probably go unnoticed from the outside.

For me, getting C11 deeper into that environment isn’t just exciting from a business point of view.

It is somewhere I genuinely want to be.

The actual setup with Leeds was also a little different to some of our GAA work.

The circle around the players and dressing room is a lot tighter, so once our job was done we stepped back and allowed the Leeds performance team to take over.

And that is exactly how it should be.

Every team is different and part of doing our job properly is understanding what they want from us.

Unfortunately for our sleep schedule, the game went to penalties.

By the time the players had finished their recovery and were getting ready for their charter flight back to the UK, it was around 10:30 or 10:45pm.

We packed everything down, loaded the truck and eventually got back to HQ at around 1am.

Normally that would have been completely fine.

The only problem was that we had a pretty big day ahead of us on Thursday.

A Few Hours Later

Something I’ve always done is journal before I go to sleep.

Even when it’s late, I normally spend 10 or 15 minutes writing down what happened that day, what went well, what didn’t and anything we could improve.

So I did that when I got home, got a couple of hours’ sleep and was back up around 6am.

My barber has looked after me since the early days of C11 and had given me an early slot, so I got a quick haircut at 7am and headed straight back towards Ballsbridge.

It was time for Eden One.

Eden One

Thursday night was the launch of our new Kuura cold plunge and our partnership with Eden One.

This one was really special for me.

Eden One was actually the first facility I ever sold a cold plunge into.

C11 was a very different business back then.

So to come back a few years later and be standing on their rooftop launching a new product and a proper partnership between C11 and Eden One was a nice full-circle moment.

Thursday also taught me something about myself and the business.

For probably the first time at one of our own events, I took a little bit of a back seat.

Not because I was tired or because I didn’t care.

Probably the opposite.

I’ve started to realise that if I want C11 to get to where I think it can go, I need help.

And I need to trust the people around me.

When you start a business, you get used to doing everything.

You sell something. You deliver it. You answer the phone. You organise the event. You load the van. If there is a problem, you fix it.

You get so used to carrying everything that sometimes it becomes difficult to hand things over.

But as the business grows, I think that can actually start holding you back.

Chloe, Aideen and Jess took the lead on so much of the event alongside the rest of the team.

I knew that if I stood on that rooftop trying to control every small detail, I would probably stop them from doing what they are good at.

So I let them do it.

And they absolutely smashed it.

We also had a number of brands supporting us on the night.

That meant a lot to me.

As a business owner, I know what it’s like when someone asks you to support an event. There isn’t always an immediate financial return from it.

So for other brands and business owners to see enough value in C11 to support what we were doing was something I really appreciated.

Then everyone started arriving.

And I think it will probably go down as one of my favourite evenings we’ve ever had at C11.

We had an incredible rooftop overlooking Dublin. A DJ playing. Food and drinks. People chatting and networking.

Neil Collins also brought everyone through a 20-minute breathwork session.

That was something I really wanted to have as part of the evening.

I’ve been to plenty of events where you arrive, have a drink, get a tote bag and go home.

I wanted people to actually take something from ours.

Even if one person left that rooftop and used something they learned during those 20 minutes again, then it was worthwhile.

We also had the guys from Stitch Me Up there personalising towels for everyone.

People could take a C11 towel away that they could actually use for their own sauna or cold plunge and have their name put on it there and then.

Small touches, but things I think people remember.

One Moment That Meant a Lot

Both of my parents were at the event.

And this was probably one of my favourite parts of the whole night.

I got to watch them talking to people we work with now, people we’ve worked with in the past and people we would love to work with in the future.

For everything my parents have done for me and everything they’ve supported me through, seeing them properly involved in that world was a really proud moment for me.

At one point during the night, I stood back on the rooftop for a minute and just looked around.

There were probably 60 or 70 people there.

All from completely different backgrounds and completely different parts of my life.

My parents were there.

My team were there.

Friends. Customers. Old colleagues. Current partners. People we’ve worked for and people we hopefully might work with someday.

Some people knew each other.

A lot of people didn’t.

But everyone on that rooftop was there, in some way, because of C11.

That was probably the moment that got me most.

Four years ago, C11 was basically a crazy idea, a plastic Tupperware box and a few pairs of Normatec boots that we were renting out.

That was it.

I definitely wasn’t thinking about 60 or 70 people standing on a rooftop in Ballsbridge celebrating something we had built.

It made me realise that building a business isn’t always just about turnover, sales, products or how many customers you have.

Sometimes it creates something else.

It brings people together.

And with everything that had been going on personally for me over the previous couple of weeks, I think I needed that moment more than I realised.

I just stood there for a minute and took it all in.

For once, I wasn’t thinking about what was next.

I wasn’t thinking about what needed fixing.

I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow morning.

I just looked around.

Four years ago this was an idea in my head.

Now my parents were standing on a rooftop surrounded by 60 or 70 people who had somehow become connected through that idea.

I was really proud of that.

More Than a Good Week

Wednesday night, Leeds United against Manchester United in Croke Park.

Thursday night, launching Kuura and our Eden One partnership on a rooftop overlooking Dublin.

If you looked at Instagram, it was probably one of the best weeks we’ve had.

And from a business point of view, it probably was.

But personally, it came during one of the hardest couple of weeks I’ve had in a long time.

And maybe that is why I appreciated it so much.

It reminded me that two things can be true at the same time.

You can be really proud of your business and still be struggling personally.

You can have an amazing day and still go home feeling completely different.

You can be surrounded by people and still need support.

I think sometimes social media makes us forget that.

I’m probably guilty of it myself.

People see Croke Park. They see Leeds United. They see the rooftop. They see the photos and the videos.

They don’t always see everything happening behind it.

And that is okay.

But over the last couple of weeks I’ve realised how important the people around me are.

My friends.

My family.

My team.

The people who pick up the phone.

The people who check in.

The people who take something off your plate without you even asking.

And also the importance of having something to get up for every morning.

There is still so much I want to do with C11.

I’m probably more excited about the next stage of the business than I’ve ever been.

I want to get our recovery trucks on the road more.

I want to see us working at Premier League away games.

I want weekends built around pulling into stadiums like Anfield, the Etihad and Old Trafford and setting up recovery facilities for some of the best teams in the world.

I want to see where Kuura can go.

And I want to keep building the team and start trusting the people around me with more.

There is an awful lot still to do.

But maybe one thing I need to get better at is stopping every now and again and appreciating what has already happened.

This week gave me a couple of those moments.

And I’m very grateful for them.

Onwards.
Ryan