By Maritza Falchetti
It’s 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday in early May. Roughly 30 people are gathered at a house in Bowie, Maryland, to listen to Jeremiah McBride, an entrepreneur who owns his own clothing brand. McBride, 25, is giving his introductory speech to prepare the gatherers for three-minute ice baths in 50-degree, windy, cloudy, rainy weather.
McBride, his brother, Zach, and his best friend, Myles, lead the way to the 10 rounds of cold plunges to come. After quickly jumping into the tub, McBride remains relaxed. He has great control over his breathing. The three of them make it seem like a piece of cake, while everyone else is looking at them shaking and nervously awaiting their turn.
It’s easy to tell that McBride has done daily ice baths for months already this year.
“Find your paradise, whatever finding your paradise means to you,” he tells the group. “You’ll see a lot of pieces saying FIND YOURS and it’s about finding your purpose, your peace, your serenity, your meaning, and we do that through clothing and through community events. I say all the time that we are not just a clothing brand we are a ‘get better brand’ everything about the brand is about getting better.”
Overcoming early obstacles
McBride was born and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The oldest of four children, he has been looked up to for most of his life. He was raised in a loving home with two supportive parents and three supportive siblings. Although his support system was and continues to be strong, McBride struggled with a drug and alcohol addiction throughout many years of his young adulthood.
He is approaching two years of sobriety and is a completely different person ever since deciding to fight his vices. Within those two years he ran marathons, dedicated a lot of time and effort into his clothing brand, stayed consistent in the gym and much more. His strength and courage to turn his life around and face the harsh reality of his struggles is what led to the rebranding of his clothing brand in late 2023.
“FIND YOURS” is not just what McBride tells cold plungers – it’s a slogan that appears on clothes he sells. He wants people to get out of their comfort zone by doing hard tasks for the betterment of their lives. McBride puts money and thought into these free-of-charge cold plunges and still finds ways to invest in, give back and uplift the people in his communities and this is where the clothing brand and cold plunges connect.
Pushing boundaries
After switching into our cold plunge clothes, we all gather outside behind three tubs filled with freezing cold ice water. This is the first time a third tub has been added, and it is quite helpful given that the group on this day is large. Everyone stands outside shivering and anticipating their turn, even people who have consistently been cold plunging for months still get nervous and anxious to plunge.
Several first-timers take the plunge. One is pushed up against a block of ice. “Wooooo! Bro leaning on the block of ice is crazy!” McBride says as he removes the block behind the person’s back while still trying to make him feel less nervous and lighten the mood. Aside from him being encouraging to all the plungers, especially to those who have never plunged before, his supportive and outgoing spirit spreads around to every guest at the event as partners cheer one another on and hold hands. McBride constantly tells them to just control their breaths and relax.
Anyone who has ever been a part of a cold plunge event knows that McBride’s personality and encouragement are what keep people coming back for more.
“He has something to look forward to every single week and knowing that this is a continued inspiration for not just himself and that he’s not the only one doing something hard but there’s other people that he’s inviting and new faces that he’s seeing every week doing something challenging, I think it’s a testament to him and his own journey just knowing that he can continue to do hard things because he sees other people around him doing the same thing,” said Naomi McBride, his youngest sister.
She said her brother has motivated her to become a better version of herself. “I feel like the cold plunges have helped us a lot and have been a big inspiration for us and me in general just making me want to get at something every day because I see him do it, he is just an inspiration overall.”
Finding his purpose
McBride started creating clothes at the age of 16 and started his brand, “Paradise Brothers,” when he was 17 but got out of touch with it when he got caught up in his addictions. After getting sober, he had the idea of bringing the brand back but with a completely different meaning the second time around, which is where “FIND YOURS” came into play. Since 2017, he’s been saying the phrase, but after trials and tribulations the phrase began to have a different meaning behind it.
“The story of overcoming my own challenges, my brother overcoming his own challenges and the community that we built makes the brand have more meaning now because there is a purpose behind the brand and there is a real story attached to it,” said McBride.
After hitting a year of sobriety, McBride wanted to find a new challenge and got the idea of cold plunges from seeing others online doing them. He wanted to give up energy drinks and realized that cold plunges would help give him the energy he needed but without the crash after. On December 15, he decided to start taking cold plunges and has done them faithfully every day since. After hitting the one-month mark, he decided to invite a couple of friends over to try it and ever since then has been doing cold plunge parties every other week.
McBride’s hope for his cold plunge events is to continue to see more and more people do something challenging every other week. His goal for the individuals who come to the events are for them to get out of their comfort sone, to meet new friends and to have a fun sober experience without explicitly pushing sobriety.
“My purpose now is to help in whatever way I can,” McBride said. “I help not by telling people what they should do. I help by giving my experience because when people just give me their experience and what they do it makes me want to join them versus feeling like they’re just telling me that I need to do something. That’s the way that I try to motivate.”
By opening the shop to his guests in the comfort of his own home at the end of these events it allows him to target part of his customer base. “When you create a brand, you can’t really choose who wears it but the good thing about having this event is that you can curate the audience that you want representing the brand. The people that are coming here that are doing a cold plunge on a Saturday morning, that are doing a 75 hard, that are getting baptized, that are running marathons, those are the people that we want representing the brand,” McBride said.